We're lying in bed at my parents' house, and we can hear footsteps overhead. The guest room is on the lower level and most of the house has hardwood floors; we can pretty much hear everything that happens within these walls, even the whispers. We can hear the dog's nails click down the hall above and the soft thump of his four feet as he goes down the carpeted stairs - one of the few areas in the house that isn't bare wood. We can hear my brother and his girlfriend talking in the den, and even though they are not speaking loud enough to discern anything aside from a dual-pitched murmur, we can clearly hear the occasional boop of the three laptops they have set up before them. We can hear the sounds of my mother in the kitchen: her knife chopping against a board, her mixing spoon going around a stainless steel bowl, her cabinets opening and closing with soft, statisfying slaps. We can hear, above all that, the sound of my father in his workshop, in what we call his "office" - the high-pitched whine of his tiny drill and the grate of what looks like a coping saw but is too small - as he sets diamonds into gold.

You roll over and throw an arm across my belly with such force that it almost hurts, but I can't be mad at the things you do in bed. Your breathing is so steady that I can keep time by it: by the air you blow against my forehead; by the ssssss sound of your breath, which always makes me think you are going to launch into an alliterative speech, the contents of which will undoubtedly amaze me; by the rustle of the sheets as your chest rises and falls. The bed is an old one, and it complains as I turn to face you, and for a moment it is as if there is no sound in the entire world but the creak of these springs, which are older than the both of us. We lie absolutely still until we can hear the sounds of the house again, and then we decide that it is time to get up.