I find her on the couch in our living room.
She's curled up in a tiny, tiny ball,
and I take a second to just try to fathom how someone could make themselves that small.
It's late.
I had a family come into the bakery right as it was about to close,
begging for some left over bread.
They were so desolate,
so hungry and cold in this unrelenting rain we have been having
that I couldn't turn them away.
So I stayed,
made them fresh bread,
set them up in the room above the bakery with blankets
and the promise that I would return in the morning with clean clothes
and more food.
I called her,
of course.
I know how worried she gets.
Now I come home to a darkened house,
a small fire burning itself out in the fireplace,
our children surely asleep in their beds,
and my wife silently sleeping on our couch,
which makes my mind wander in so many different directions.
The fact that she's not in our room,
for one,
because I know it means she cannot sleep without me,
still,
even after all these years.
For another,
I have to stand in awe that she's even able to sleep at all.
After living through years without a single night of peaceful rest,
seeing her ability to sleep,
and not only that,
but to truly relax,
is quite literally a miracle,
and just more evidence to me of her strength
and her determination to not let the games beat her.
I am taken up in such a sudden surge of love that I cannot leave her be.
I go to her,
sit gently by her side on the couch,
resting my hand on her cheek and my lips on her forehead
until she awakens,
fluttering her dark eyelashes and reaching up to rub an eye.
She stretches her legs out from their curled up position
and reaches for me,
smiling.
"I missed you," she whispers as I lean down to kiss her again,
this time on the lips.
"I know. I wish you could have gone to bed."
"You know I can't."
She kisses me again and allows herself to be pulled into a sitting position next to me.
I take her hand and she grasps it tightly back,
something I do not take for granted after all those press appearances
where it simply hung limp in mine for show.
Now this is where she wants to be.
We lead each other to bed,
meandering past our daughter's room,
she who sleeps sprawled out, one leg beneath the sheet,
with Katniss' hair tangled around her pillow,
and past our son's room,
who is still so small as to be curled up like his mother,
blinking frail blonde eyelashes in his dreaming.
We let them be.
Again I reach for her hand and lead her to our bedroom at the end of the hall.
She is tired,
I can tell,
so I let her crawl to her side of the bed,
shifting under the sheets until she is comfortable,
and reaching for me.
I take off my leg and slip in beside her,
nestling her under my chin,
so close to my chest as to be an extension of my own body.
She looks up at me one last time before falling into oblivion
and kisses me.
I don't know if it is the family that I saw tonight,
their desperation and suffering,
but my emotions run high as she puts her lips to mine softly,
gently,
so domestically,
and settles her tangled head back onto my chest.
I cannot take this for granted,
this life we share.
I know the strong possibility that this never would have become reality,
I recognize that.
We have withstood more obstacles than any other two people I have ever come across,
and yet here we are,
in our bed
in our home
with our children sleeping soundly in the rooms next door.
We are so entwined in this life,
so lost in each other that it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
So as her breathing evens out and I marvel once more at her ability to sleep through the night like she could so long ago,
in a time where her father came home
and her hair was in two braids
and she did not understand the fear that existed in this world as of yet,
I see her and hear her next to me
and I am floored at her presence,
clutching her sleeping body as if it was tethered to my own lifeline,
which it most certainly is,
and fall quietly and slowly to sleep
next to this beautiful woman that I love
in a world that once more ensures
a father coming home to his children
a daughter in two braids
and so little fear in this world now as to be meaningless.
Thank God for her.
Thank God for this new world of ours,
one of cleanliness
and rebirth
and newness
and life.
So much life.