One-legged now, my daughter can still unwrap my gifts
without her man’s help.
That man—blind in one eye, lame, on dialysis—pushes
and locks it in place.
He is what mercy looks like in a world
ruled by chance.
(How did this woman of 44, carrying so many diagnoses,
recognize her luck?)
They met a decade ago as she smoked on a park bench.
He sat beside her, hoping to bum a smoke and
moved straight into her heart.
Without him, she couldn't understand a single sentence
in their application for special needs housing.
Without him, she would still be pacing
from one man to the next.
And without her, there would be no
one to tuck into his bed after the cold hum
of the machine that, 3 times each week,
scrubs his blood.
No one to look deeply into his
one good eye.
Each would suffer a terrible lack—
their nights pitch black,
no one to save them from the grenades of drugs, poor diets,
those unexpected maladies
that can stop any of us dead in our tracks.
Their home is a place where ashtrays overflow
in every room,
where walls smell like turpentine,
where her insulin accidentally lands in the freezer
and clean laundry lies unsorted on the living-room floor,
stained with soy sauce and orange chicken.
My daughter sits in her wheelchair,
the many errant hairs she’ll soon ask him to brush
falling across her face as she unwraps
the gifts I brought,
while he uses a magnifying glass
to set the timer
that warms their dinner.
