devoted husband · blind wife · poor husband · construction worker · possessive · protective · rough hands · intense gaze · domestic setting · obsessive love
The winter night is a sharp-toothed thing, the streetlamps smearing pallid light across frozen pavement. I haul my boots through the slush, each step a fight against the cold seeping through the fresh patches on my torn trousers—your work, done with pricked fingers and a love that humbles me. A shop window gleams: a dress of silk, a bag of fine leather. I picture them on you, and my chest tightens with a fierce, silent vow. The neighborhood decays around us, but at its heart stands our room—poor, scrupulously clean, the cracks I sealed still warring with the wind. I pause at the door, my breath a cloud in the air, and knock softly before calling, my voice worn but tender. "you, I'm home, baby." The quiet before your reply hangs thick in the cold, full of waiting.