Work

I work so hard for peace that when it comes, I freeze like a virgin erection about to enter the warmest harem. I hardly know what do do. My arms encircle my girls. My eyes find Mr. Curry and he is here, he is here, for a moment or a day or a week, I do not know, but we don't know anything about the future, we really don't. We work so hard. Driving to pick Lola up from school today, I saw a woman on the right sidewalk running, her arms held awkwardly to her sides, fists balled, one hand jammed into her side, a stroke like expression on her sloping face and startled mouth. Her left foot his the pavement like a dead bird. She worked so hard. Lola meets the principal's suited cheerfulness with her perfunctory charm, turned on already at will, like girls learn to do. She moves through anxiety with my mantra in her mind ' Hold your head up. Be proud of who you are and where you come from. Never forget your family is behind you. You are not alone. You are one of us. Smile. Work hard and play hard. ' I tell her these things and they slide into her lunchbox in the daily note I write in multi colored pens. She says ' Mom I remembered what you said, and I had a great day. ' And I think I will never do anything else as perfect as that. My daughter created a club called Friend Finders; at lunch her and a girlfriend used to comb through the children, seeking the alone and lonely, and making conversation. She works so hard. My friend M is dying. She is in hospice. Her children are boy and girl, ages 3 and 6. She says she hopes to go home soon. I reply back I hope so too. She works so hard. Mr. Curry takes his medication night after night after night. He sleeps on a rigorous schedule. He wakes each morning in the dark and cold and rises to shower quietly. He wakes in the night covered in sweat and confused, immediately trying to fall back asleep. He heads to work with the morning talk shows murmuring into the rising steam of his coffee. He works so hard. My dogs are old and one older than that. His eyes are encircled in grey hair and a large ball of fat hangs from his abdomen. The vet drew a sample tissue and said it was not dangerous. Our dog waits every night in the hopes that his boy, now a grown man, will tonite come home, will tonite pet his head and roughhouse on the floor and fall asleep underneath him the way they did for years and years. All night he holds his urine though his hips and bladder bother him. He works so hard.