As Midnight to the Moon Is Sleep to the Beloved

I rummage through the Easter Basket I made for myself, pushing through all the chocolate, looking for one particular kind of hard, small colored candies. I've been thinking about them all day. There's only one in the basket. I'm sure that I put more in, and I haven't eaten them yet.

The suspect is sitting at my desk at his computer.

"Joey," I say. He looks up. "Did you eat my Nerds?" He looks down at the floor, sheepish smile.

"Maybe."

"Didn't I give you your own?"

"Yeah. I ate them all." He pauses, more sheepish grin. He kills me. But he looks entirely remorseful.

[The night before he comes to visit, I still feel like shit. On the phone, the next morning, I tell him I coughed so hard the night before, I threw up in bed. He arrives. That night, I cough more. Each time the fits come, he wakes up, sleepily patting my back until the paroxysms stop.]

I come home from school. I ask him if he ate lunch. He replies that he ate four donuts and some candy.

But he left the last donut for me.

[The next night is relatively cough free. The next morning, however, sitting on the edge of the bed, I cough for an entire minute. His hand shoots out to rub my back. When the coughing stops, he mumbles, "You're my baby."

I pull on my shoes and whisper, "You're my baby too."]

"THEY SET ME UP FOR FAILURE," I yell from the comfort of my bed, when he reminds me that I need to study.

When he slips in beside me, two hours later, he whispers, "Do something for me, ok? Set your alarm and wake up in the morning to study."

[Our hands find each other in bed and we grip our fingertips together until the pressure on his chest is too much. He slips away.

I wake up in the morning. I haven't coughed at all. After studying, I slip back in bed for another half hour. I don't sleep--I just lie there, a rare quietude falling over me. I think about the past year, about how--always--lucky I am.]

"Close your eyes," I say, "and make your hands into a cup." I dump half of the box into his hand, and he tips them into his mouth.

"You're the best," he says.

I wish I could videotape this moment and carry it into the past, show it to myself in those dark days when we fell apart. Remind myself that good things happen, that love prospers and grows in the darkest of places, that hope and faith can sustain, that beauty is what happens when you least expect it, when you don't deserve it, when you can't fathom it.