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The Night Guard at the Women's Shelter

Exhausted but alert,
responsible for the undisturbed
rest of seventeen sleeping women,
I'm not surprised
by late-night radio.
Tonight, a caller from Indiana
confesses her dilemma
to the radio psychologist:

"I had to give up smoking,"
she says, "because I kept
wondering what would happen
if I stuck a lit cigarette
in my eye."

Sometimes, when the shelter's

German Shepherd dozes
at my feet, his legs twitch
and muffled yips ripple
across his thoat. These
little replications of chase
or escape must imitate real
terror, or, some densely imagined
kill. All it takes is a soothing
handstroke to still him.

Newcomers to the shelter
always expect to hear women's
sleep-strangled screams
and to see the firey tips
of late-night cigarettes
blistering the dark. Instead,
a regularity of breathing
rustles through the night.
The absence of danger
between the cots
makes the very air
seem kind, especially
toward sunrise when everything
begins to glisten as if
safe sleep had changed the world.

Other mornings, after her
quota of sheltered nights
has been reached, any
one of these women might
rise from her kitchen floor
to stroke the familiar
wounds, to rearrange again
the dissheveled rooms.
Then, it will be the man
who has slept elsewhere.

The woman will rise alone,
stunned to find herself
afraid he won't come home,
or worse, that he will.

Such a woman might easily
learn to hold her cigarette
at arm's length and eye it
with considerable suspicion.

Learn more about this author, Shirley Lake.
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