{i miss paper letters}

The geese were flying south again and they’d woken up to snow more than once already, though it hadn’t lasted past noon.  The bucks were telling them it was time to reseal in icy night-whispers.  She had been awakened by the drafts more than once, just as she’d reminded him more than once to pick up the foam gun.  She looked at him still snoring beside her with a twinge of multi-faceted resentment.

Knowing she’d never fall back, she slid her feet into the sheepskin slippers he’d given her for their first Christmas years ago.  He hated the state of them and had tried to get her to wear the new ones he’d bough last year (at no small cost, because to them there was no such thing), but she was sentimental and couldn’t smell them anyway.  Standing at the three-hole double-basin porcelain kitchen sink while the percolator filled with well water, she watched the pair of cardinals outside the window.  It was always the same: the male arrived first in his fine cardinal’s vestments, ensuring the absence of threats, and then retreated to the juniper bushes while the female dined at the feeder.  When she was finished he would escort her back to wherever their secret hideout was located.  She imagined it was secret because he was so protective.

He had been raised a Catholic, and to him the cardinal’s finery was merely the embodiment of the color of doubt.  She’d once caught him throwing horse chestnuts at the tiny creature; when she questioned his motives, he offered her nothing.  She didn’t catch him at it again, but wondered often if he was still at it.

That incident had gotten her thinking about the irony of it all.  He considered the cardinal as a symbol of doubt, and here she was, doubtful yet again that his bad behavior at the bird’s expense had ceased.  She laughed aloud to herself; unaware that he’d been leaning on the doorframe for five minutes now, admiring the figure she cut in her black yoga pants against the white of the kitchen fixtures.

What’s so funny, he asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.