sleep

Eardive in to the pile of coats in the back seat of the car, and sleep until the rest stops. There is not much safer than knowing I can tune out that inanity, mom and dad will keep each other company and I am the kid to be cared for, I can sleep.

I could: be attentive and time it just right, try and get it wrong, not try and get it wrong, not try and have it fine. Sleeping with your hand against my stomach, or lying there wishing you'd wake up for our routine. There is power in yielding to this contingency, there was power in letting it pass.

The returned luxury of not sharing. I find books, needles, socks, hats in my bed, and it does not matter that they were there all night with me. It's cold but I'm comfortable, and I'm grown here, relishing the absence of another set of luxuries, of a body to share gone and all the opportunity to be my own elation at myself swathed in blankets. Some nights, I sigh.

Headfirst in to my own lap soft spare sweater side of my teaching bag turned upwards towards my forehead. It's really just me here, elbowed in to the crowd. The comfort of asserting that I feel safe, burrowed on my valuables and witnessed unconscious by strangers. They come and go, and I am so somberous as we go over the manhattan bridge. It must be something I breathed in the city air all those years, I have never overslept and missed my stop.