I'm not sure who to thank for this.

We have a house for you. It's been completely renovated, everything is new. Twenty feet from the front door is the highway. Twenty feet from the back is the railroad tracks. This is where you will raise your children.

The cancer is gone. The months of radiation are over. The surgeries are over too, and you can live your life now. Both of your breasts are gone, flesh and muscle pared away all the way down to your ribcage.

You established your life in this country, started a family, a successful business. Now you can send for your mother, finally give her peace and comfort. A visit to the doctor says your father gave her a case of syphilis before he died over twenty years ago. Now you won't have much time with her at all.

It's been raining for days and I can't get warm. I can't help but think about all the relationships that have ended in the workshop, me working the saw, him with stupid hands. A late night email from a man who thought I was unkind but now perhaps kind enough to give him what he wants. Someone who wants advice on antique doors but does not want to wander my neighborhood to find them.

Mostly, I'd rather be me than anyone else I know. But not tonight.

We are sitting in the senior director's office and I can tell my young colleague is trying not to cry. She pulls her hair across her face, but I can see her ears starting to redden.

My day started with good news from a family I have been trying to guide, but soon enough my ears will be reddening too.

I work late and get off the bus in the dark. I am behind some kid with hipster hair and skinny jeans. He is wearing a black hoodie that says "Hell's KItchen NYC" on the back. I want to do something vicious to him.

12/30/09

He called yesterday but I did not take the call.

He colored my dreams last night anyway, dreams where there was no sanctuary for me, a time where I lived no where and was not wanted by anyone.

Today he came into the office, his hands held together, like if he held his impending homelessness in front of him it would stay there. I took him into a conference room, sat next to him, touched his arm, and did what I could. Which I know is not enough.

On the bus ride home I could still smell all of the cigarettes he smoked to give him enough spine to talk to me. We pass a dead end street casually guarded by a man and a large fighting dog parked to discourage holiday shoppers and tourists from interfering in whatever business is being transacted down in the shadows of the winter twilight. In a garbage strewn service alley, someone is kneeling with their face to the wall. At the part of town where we dump our poor, the bus idles to stay on its schedule. We are waiting behind the drugstore while a sunburnt frayed specimen dances the edge off his meth fix.

I don't know how to make any of this matter as I am heading for home.