Naming the Heartbeats

I've become the person who says Darling, who says Sugarpie,

Honeybunch, Snugglebear—and that’s just for my children.

What I call my husband is unprintable. You’re welcome. I am

his sweetheart, and finally, finally—I answer to his call and his

alone. Animals are named for people, places, or perhaps a little

Latin. Plants invite names for colors or plant-parts. When you

get a group of heartbeats together you get names that call out

into the evening’s first radiance of planets: a quiver of cobras,

a maelstrom of salamanders, an audience of squid, or an ostentation

of peacocks. But what is it called when creatures on this earth curl

and sleep, when shadows of moons we don’t yet know brush across

our faces? And what is the name for the movement we make when

we wake, swiping hand or claw or wing across our face, like trying

to remember a path or a river we’ve only visited in our dreams.