You woke me at four, in that dark before the birds, and I forgave you before you'd even found your shoes. I always do. Under the flat white lights I have been standing in one line or another for ninety minutes now, weight on the left foot, then the right, the small of my back curling a question you keep ignoring.
There is a bag hanging off my shoulder that you packed as if I were a mule with a grudge to work off. Noted. Filed. Carried anyway.
You are afraid we are late. I don't know what late is. I only know your heart, which has been sprinting since the parking shuttle for no distance at all, and your jaw, locked shut around a word you never said to the man who cut the line. That word is living in your neck now. It will be there Thursday.
I have not had water since yesterday. You gave me a coffee, which is a lie about water, and I drank it, because I love you and I am an optimist. Your feet are swelling quietly inside those shoes. Your breath went shallow the moment the screen said DELAYED, then forgot to come back; I have been breathing us both on the emergency reserve for twenty minutes and I would like it on record that I never stopped.
I'm not angry. I'm proud, actually. You keep showing up to your life and I get to come along, close as skin.
But when we sit down at that gate, before the phone, before anything: a mouthful of water. Just that.
A small kindness for the animal that got you here.