Sometimes you get so lonely that you let Quiet creep inside your apartment and into bed with you. You do this when your girl is out of town, and she’s not picking up her phone. She’s doing this not because she doesn’t want to talk to you, but because she is asleep. You know this. You know this without having to confirm it.

You are so tired. You are tired enough to believe that everything has gone still, right down to the many rivulets of blood coursing through your body, both leaving and returning to the spring of your heart. Even this endless coursing of water inside your body, you believe, has gone silent.

So you go to the door, pull the chain back, twist the deadbolt, and open the door a crack. Then Quiet comes in. You lock the patio door, and the crickets outside fade to nothing. The road noises fade with them. Likewise the drone of the air conditioning and the clicking as your betta tries to bite through his glass bowl.

She is inside your apartment now, looking around, a little uncomfortable but at home soon enough. She says nothing, of course. She just looks around, her gaze spreading into all the corners, then she looks back at you. She takes you by the hand and you go into the bedroom. You both lay down.

It’s nothing clandestine. Nothing that hasn’t already been done by every person who has ever been alone on any night. You have been inviting her into your room ever since you were a small child. She slipped into your room then as she slips into your house now. She cradles you and rocks you back and forth as the world fades into that same noiseless shape that everything else has become a part of, and you slip away into dreams as she holds you in her arms. They are not the arms of a lover, but those of a mother who has just finished singing the last note of her lullaby.