Abacus

There were
months when I wouldn’t get out of bed
until you called me at 8:30
every morning.
Not because I was asleep-
I didn’t do that, sleep,
but because I would lie there all day
or at least until two
when I’d crawl out of bed, shower
rush to do all the things
that made it look like
I hadn’t been in bed all day
before my partner came home
the partner I didn’t trust
& who didn’t trust me but
how do you untangle ten years
and how did I even get here,
in these rumpled sweaty bedsheets
which wrong step in my childhood
led to this,
living in a trailer again, isolated
& dependent & wasn’t I supposed to be
all full of promise
If you didn’t call.

I’ll never be able to pay back those
endless phone calls and
all the small hundreds of ways you
kept me alive,
but I’ll keep trying,
for you and your daughters,
my goddaughters,
(and how did I earn those
wonderful creatures)
even though I know
you’d never keep score,
there aren’t ways to tally
a lifetime of favors and friendship
not even in the abacus you
keep in your brain to do math,
and yes, I will teach them their fractions,
and you will teach them to be whole, and
do you still have the cheat sheet I
made for you, when June was first learning everything,
and Nora still split the bed in half,
napping totally sideways with her
elbows in my armpit
and you were taking accounting classes
at night?