You went still around midnight and I thought, good, finally, rest. I was wrong. This is a different kind of still.
Here is what I logged while you weren't looking. The thumb: moving, one small stroke, then another, then another, the only muscle you've given a job in over an hour. The eyes: wide in the dark, pupils blown open to swallow the little glowing rectangle, drinking a light I was not built to drink at this hour.
The breath: I kept starting it for you and you kept forgetting to finish. Shallow at the top of the chest, held during the bad ones, let out in a thin leak when your face did the thing it does when it reads something that stings. I don't know what any of it said.
I only know you kept flooding me with the alarm-juice, the run-now chemical, over and over, and there was nothing to run from. Just you, horizontal, jaw set like you were bracing for a hit that never came.
The neck has been at one angle so long I've started to believe it lives there now. The stomach is a small clenched fist waiting to be told why. It's been waiting a while.
I'm not upset with you. I never am. I'll keep the heart going through every one of these, the way I have through everything, that steady work under the dark you never once thanked me for and never needed to.
But you're safe. There's nothing here. Put down the light, and let me have the breath back, the whole one, all the way to the bottom. Just one. Then let me take you under.
I know the way.