Husband, while you are away I am doing some of the things you like best. I piled clean laundry on the bed as though I were actually going to fold it before climbing in, but you know me better. Two loads fit just as well in one basket at the foot of the bed, making room for me to lie down on your side, brace my body all around with our pillows.

I am beating a video game you've beaten already. I am starting over again, because I like to play the same life, the same choices, the same sweetness.

The refrigerator I cleaned out of all of the things we made together and didn't finish when you were here. The salad that spoiled despite my intentions to have it every night, my love of what's growing green outside so rarely translating to the choices I make when it comes to filling my plate.

But I haven't been. Filling my plate, I mean. Without you I am making small meals, eating a little when I am home from work, a little more a few hours later. I'm hungry now anticipating a little breakfast when I wake up facing your lamp and your books thumbed before bed, the photograph you keep of me on your bedside table. In the photograph I am nineteen and you've placed a fortune from a fortune cookie inside: You are original and creative. At the time you said it was more appropriate for me than it was for you.

That was nearly ten years ago. What you didn't know then, what I remind you every time that I can now, is that my fortune is you.