Little Love Note

We're lying in bed talking. It's after sex and after all the night-time pre-bed things, so my hair is wet from the shower and the fan is blowing and we're brushed and clean and under the sheets. You're talking, and then you notice something in my face--concern? alertness? Something. What, you ask, what is it? Did I say something wrong? (And it always stings a little, this trepidation of yours, tiptoeing through my minefields; but I know that it is hard-earned.) No, I tell you. I'm just listening. I heard a noise. A noise? Just a little noise. (I'm the light sleeper, the one who investigates things that go bump in the night.) Maybe it was a blind flapping, or maybe it was the cat yakking. Time will tell. And maybe it's relief or post-sex happiness or the vulgar novelty of that word, yakking, and how it rhymes with flapping, that makes laughter erupt, bright and sharp, between us. But in any case: I love you.