In the first inch of sunrise, believing me asleep, my husband slumps in his quarter of some memory room, weeps to ten confidantes, his fingers. This is our kitchen, this the invented grief of his future: orphaned, as always; newly widowed. His fear brews this over and over he has told me, concocting loss and its aftertaste, forcing on him the cloud-dark cup. The kick of forestalled bitterness moves his hands to become solemn workers: he shakes fragrant beans into the grinding mill, coaxes steam into milky foam. He hopes I'll rise to these cues. But if I could touch him through constructed sorrows, I would beg him send the future back to bed, since it is not my silk gown, not his leopard robe, not the sunlight assembling itself in now. His quiet sighs steep through the lavaliere room. Cruel or not, I lie in our bed quiet as the moon.