I’ve never been a singer though, my voice, it always comes out in pieces. Scratchy. Not soothing, not what she needed, E I mean, when she cried. So, when I went to get her, I would whisper to her. I was too tired to think of much to say. Sometimes I told her that I was so tired that it felt like my bed was a foreign country. A homeland I could no longer properly imagine. The beds in our house, sometimes, I would whisper too, look like they will look after the apocalypse. Empty. Waiting for people who can never come back to them. Mostly though, I kept it simple. I would cut to the chase. I would whisper, We are the only people in the world.

We are the only people in the world, I would say to her. The only ones. The only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones the only ones

* * *

It was time next for B to go to bed, but he wasn’t ready. He couldn’t be put down. So I turned off all the lights in the apartment and walked with him in a little circle that took in all the rooms. Round and round the garden. Like two teddy bears. One step. Two step. Tickle you under there. Do you know that one? I said to him.

We whispered goodnight to all the things as we saw them. Over and over again we did. Snips and snails and puppy dog tails.

Goodnight kitchen, goodnight floor,

goodnight windows, goodnight door.

Goodnight rags and sprays and mops,

goodnight shutters, goodnight locks.

In my downy lullaby voice, I could say anything at all. His hair was so soft against my face. I could feel him and smell him in the dark so completely. There wasn’t a word for it really, what there was between him and me, it was something different, something total, something only for us.

There were things that I didn’t say goodnight to. Things that I refused to talk to him about, lullaby voice or no. I didn’t mention the whispering inside the walls. The slurp gurgle of the drains. The shadows that grew longer and longer, longer, really, than the flickering lights should have let them.