Left Side of the Bed

Sometime in the night
you got up, leaving no crests
for dolphins to break through,
no soft tide of snores,
no warmth radiating
like a small, dependable sun—

just vast and airless space
to the left of the bed.

Sometime before the alarm,
but after our teeth were brushed,
spitting, rinsing—
the small rituals that say
we are still here—

you got up, and I did not.

I sank to the bottom,
waterlogged and alone,
waiting for sleep to take me
like a gull lifting off
from something already abandoned—

and then, sometime after you left,
you returned,
as if nothing in the night—
the left side of the bed—
had widened
while you were gone.