68 Or Bust

Vignette

You say, “If this is our biggest problem, we’re doing fine.”
You also say you want it at seventy-six, which I would not call “fine” at all.

The thermostat is the site of our most consistent negotiation.
I tell you that you can always add layers.

Blankets.

Sweaters.

Socks if it comes to that.

But if it’s hot, I’m stuck. There’s no getting colder. I can’t take off my skin.

So we compromise.
Which is to say we settle on a number that gives neither of us what we wanted.
And we live with it the way you live with anything when you have to,

when the alternative is worse, when the alternative is being alone in a perfectly tempered apartment with no one to fight about it with.