The best night in forever, my little heart, plastered with band-aids but still beating.
I didn't know it could be that warm, when this baby voice I didn't know I had called to John as he was passing my bedroom door and asked him to tuck me in.
Grinning with mischievous glee, a boogeyman with round teeth, he skittered into my bedroom and tucked the blankets around my shoulders, my back and belly, my legs, my ankles, my feet. Then he rubbed the warmth right into me, ran his strong hands the length of the sheets and smoothed them over, until I was a shiny black bump in a shiny black surface.
I was so safe. Dropping off to sleep, nothing could get past the impermeable barricade.
I dreamed of kisses and moonlight and the first time my code ever compiled, I dreamed of the first time I saw a dragon, the first time someone told me they loved me.
I woke up, my usual four-thirty-am-check-my-e-mail, drink some water, crawl back into a warm bed, nightly ritual.
There was an e-mail from him, answering questions I thought he was too much a coward to face. It took a week to answer them, but I can see the courage behind his words.
I can see that he tried. I can see that maybe I did mean something after all, and now I can let go without the holes in my ego.
It's still freezing out. Blue fingers, goosebumps on bare legs, there was a courrier this morning delivering a book that I'd paid for ages ago, and the sky is bright.
And my heart is mending.