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Five things you can touch, whispers Rose, and I touch: duvet, her hand, my own hair, the rough plaster of the wall, and my device. It wakes up, a rectangle of soft light in our dark bedroom.
Four things you can hear, she says, and I listen for the tap-tap of water from somewhere in the kitchen, the rhythm of a neighbor’s music through the floor, the rustling of bedsheets and my pounding heart.
Three things you can see,
the socket of the empty light fixture on the ceiling, darker dark. My device in bed beside me, and Rose bathed in its light, a graceful silhouette propped up on one elbow.