Night Shifts at the Group Home
By Mary Szybist
for Lily Mae
The job was easy: I tucked
them in, kicked off my shoes, listened for
the floor to go quiet. Everyone
slept except one: outside her door,
she paced, she hummed, holding
the edge of her torn
nightgown. Pointing, I told
her: to bed. Your bed. But she would not
stay there. She was old,
older than my mother: manic, caught
up in gibberish, determined to
sleep on my cot—
At first it was just to
quiet her. I could only sleep
if she slept, and I needed relief
from myself. That is how she
became a body next to mine
whether or not I wanted there to be
a body. She climbed
into my bed. I let her
sleep hot and damp against my spine.
All night she rocked, she turned,
she poked her spastic elbows
into my calves and slurred
her broken noises in the dark. All the old
fans went round in clicks
those summer nights—and she rolled
in bed and kicked
me in the head and I was
happy. No words, no tricks,
I just didn't love
my loneliness. My mind
felt cooler
with her there. Beside
her, I could have been anyone.
She had no word for me and not the kind
of mind to keep one.
And if she kicked
me, some nights, just
for the fun of it—who was I
to disappoint my one?
Sometimes I imagine I
was someone she won
at a fair as the wheel spun
under the floating, unfaltering sun
and clicked each lucky one
and one
until I was happily undone.
Copyright Credit: Mary Szybist, "Night Shifts at the Group Home" from Incarnadine. Copyright © 2013 by Mary Szybist. Reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press. www.graywolfpress.org
Source: Incarnadine (Graywolf Press, 2013)