Stoicism for Beginners

There was that night you woke and asked,
Are you crying? And I was. You said nothing,
but held me in your arms and hoped
I’d come to believe in time’s indifference,
hoped I’d stretch myself toward it,
snatch some wisdom from it,
take it back into that night when I woke you
and you felt the bed shudder the way
a bed shudders when two grown men
share it—one of them upset, the other
holding tight, knowing he must learn
the particulars of time.