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Darkness. It was so silent, he could hear the slightest sounds at a deafening pitch. The tick of the second hand on the clock over the doorway. The sound of the refrigerator from the kitchen down the hall. The house settling all around him. The midnight blues were as vivid as the first taste of sunlight in the morning, casting everything in an ominous glow. The streaks of tears were still fresh on his unshaven face and his eyes burned from the roots of his emotions.

Standing, he walked silently, trying to mute his footsteps and the crackling floor boards beneath him. There were so many empty rooms in this house, for too long unfilled by the sounds of children playing and tiptoeing through the darkness to find comfort against the softness of their mother. He watched his only daughter, her timid face having turned angelic in the glow of the night light. In his mind, he recalled the new sound of her giggle, soft and spry, coming from a place so deep in her little belly that her chocolate drop eyes would water. Her tiny little teeth were the most perfect white, but seemed a shade of blue, setting off her purple lips and the gentle wheeze of her pug nose.

Reaching across her miniature bed, he pulled her comforter across her back, brushing back her feather soft hair. She slept the same way as her mother. He had forgotten the way his wife laid elegantly, barely making an impression on the mattress. He had spent countless nights holding her close in their sleep. Maybe he was afraid she would float away in the quiet of night. It had been too long since the last time he'd held her.

Taking a seat in the old rocker next to his bride's dressing table, he leaned forward, resting his elbows just slightly behind his kneecaps. His head tilted just slightly to his right, his mouth forming an agape smile, but one comfortable to the shape of his mouth. She always slept with a hand next to her face, breathing gently upon her thin, long fingertips that felt so wonderful rubbing his shoulders. Especially when accompanied by a cool kiss to his neck.

He loved her from the first second he saw her. She was petite, like a porcelain doll. Her face had cheekbones that spread swiftly down to slightly oversized lips and a soft, gentle chin. Her eyes, Lord, her eyes were hypnotizing. Milky green was the only way he could describe them. Her mother and father called them cat eyes, which led to a childhood nickname of Kitty. She still answered to it, maybe for their sake.

There were a constellation of tiny moles all along her body, most of them barely felt beneath the sweep of fingertips. They amazed him and and his daughter equally. They had a personality, somehow. He memorized the letter written to him about a night in the winter when she shared a bath with their daughter and she first noticed them. And she was the only person he knew who had an outtie belly button. That too was passed along to their daughter. A year's time had made him forget about all of the little things. Her delicate wheeze matched everything about her.

Crawling in to bed, he crept closely against her, his hand sweeping across her jutting pelvic bone and up to her midsection. He risked placing a peck of a kiss on her chilled shoulder and slowly she turned, her eyes still looking green, even in the sea of blue.

Her eyes fell upon an almost unrecognizable remnant of her husband. His baby face was now separated with lines and hung close to the bones beneath. She didn't even know him when she saw him at first. His mouth seemed out of place on this face, his blue eyes sunken and hollow. His face was weathered and the slender scar beneath his left eye threw everything out of proportion. Still, she rubbed her soft hand across him, afraid he was a dream, like the ones which filled her head every night he was gone.

This time, her hand made contact against warm flesh.

"Are you all right?" Her voice was scratchy.

He nodded, but she sat up anyway, feeling his face with the back of her hand. The skin on his neck was cold and his eyes wide, as though he had been up for too long in the darkness.

"Do you want me to turn a light on?" She asked, a slight nervousness in her voice.

"No," his voice was quiet. "I can see everything."

"Is something wrong?"

She had become a good mother and it put a relaxed smirk across his face again.

"I was just watching you," he confessed.

She nodded and swept her legs beneath her tail, rising up and tugging at her nightgown. The sweet smell of her hair fell from her body as she removed the gown and her undergarments. She didn't want anything to inhibit his view of her. Leaning forward, she kissed her husband of five years, her lip having to conform to the scar running across his mouth. For every day he was gone, she remained completely faithful. Two of her friends' husbands didn't come home. Every night, she held her daughter to her breast, crying and clinging to a photograph of her husband in uniform.

Her skin was as soft as cotton. White and smooth. He was almost ashamed to look upon her for fear of corrupting such beauty. Her fingers were cold against his chin, her eyes asking him to look upon her.

Her shoulders were perfect, blending in to gentle breasts, fallen with time and womanly. Her nipples were dark, she thought too dark, and almost perfectly round and hard in the night air. Her stomach was soft and flat, trailing off to her narrow hips and a thick mound of dark hair. Her hands rested firmly on her legs, which she hated. Too thin, she always said.

She began undressing him, lifting his arms and pulling off his white tee shirt. He was lean now, not an ounce of baby fat on him. She'd forgotten the feel of his chest hair through her fingers, but her eyes fell on a string of scars up his right side. He tried hiding them, the same way she hid her legs, but she insisted on looking at them. Her green eyes swelled with tears as she touched them. They were the reason he was back in their bed tonight. Stooping, she kissed them, each and every one, as if to make them better.

Easing him down on the mattress, she didn't let him help, she simply removed his pajamas and boxers, feeling the burning chill in his feet. For a moment, she observed him, her mind having forgotten what a naked man looked like. She kissed his hand and crawled across him, lying down and turning her face to watch him. Her heart began to pound as he moved over her, leaning down to kiss her face and lips. He remembered the first time he made love to her, out near the creekbed on the farm. They were eighteen.

She gasped and chirped, her hips thrusting her off of the mattress. He hesitated, but she squeezes his wrist, spreading her legs apart as he continued to enter. She moaned loudly, remembering immediately the way he felt inside her. She wrapped her other hand around his right wrist, locking her arms as they make love for the first time since September of the years before. She came almost instantly, her body rumbling as a sheet of sweat began to warm her flesh. Her breasts quivered and arms shook, a smile parting her lips as she gazed upon him.

"I love you," she gently panted, a tear streaming down her cheek. "And I've missed you so much."

"I love you too," he told in a quiet voice. "I'll never leave again."