The Night After You Lose Your Job

You know sleep will dart beyond your grasp. Its edges

crude and merciless. You will clutch at straws,

wandering the cold, peopled rooms of

the Internet, desperate for any fix. A

vapor of faith. An amply paid gig, perhaps,

for simply having an earnest heart or

keeping alive the children you successfully

bore. Where, you’d like to know,

on your résumé do you get to insert

their names, or the diaper rash you lovingly cured

with coconut oil, or the white lies you mustered

about the older man in the cream-colored

truck that glorious spring day, who hung his head

out the window and shouted, “Coronavirus!”

while you were chalking unicorns

and seahorses in the drive? Where

do you get to say you clawed through

their night terrors, held them through their sweaty

grunting and writhing, half-certain a demon

had possessed them, and still appeared

lucid for a 9 a.m. meeting, washed, combed, and collared,

speaking the language of offices?

At last, what catches your eye is posted large-

font and purple: a local mother in search

of baby clothes for another mother

in need. Immediately your body is charged,

athletic with purpose, gathering diapers,

clothes, sleep sacks, packing them tightly in bags.

You tie the bags with a ribbon and set them

on the porch for tomorrow. Then you stand

at the door, chest still thumping wildly, as if

you have just won the lottery—

                           and so you did, didn’t you?

You arrived here, at this night, in one

piece, from a lifetime of luck

and error, with something necessary to give.