Smell of terpentine

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 

her wheelchair into the room

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.