It is quiet here.

Beyond the noise of the boy stumbling up the stairs

clambering for his keys after another night

of being twenty-one,

past the sounds down the hall of a movie played obnoxiously loud,

around the corner from the grumpy old pipes

muttering and sputtering to no one in particular,

lies a girl and me.

Why am I there except that I know she seems to rest when I am.

So against the pleas of my confusion,

I stifle my woes so as not to disturb her,

and in the din of all of this,

she finds sleep.