In a tenement shared with a dozen others,
I sleep in a closet just long enough to stretch out.
Sometimes I bring guys there.

One says he’s never done it in a closet before.
Afterward he touches my hair and wraps it
around an ear. He holds me. It makes me restless,

his willingness to do something so sad.
And what of me? I’m already pregnant.
I turn the pages of a phone book with thumbs

bruised from cracking open pistachios,
dozens of them, even the ones barely open.
After it’s over I come home, take the pills

to prevent infection and gag.
The undoing of an act.
A string hangs down from a light fixture

in the closet, filthy from the oils
of a thousand hands pulling it hard.
I close myself in that evening but thin light

from the hallway creeps under the door.
Should I pray for forgiveness?
I think this is how grief should look—

all hot air and shadows on the wall.
But the truth was this: I wasn’t grieving.
Outside the clinic a man ate his lunch by a dumpster.

A woman brushed something off her skirt.
I’d been undoing myself for years.
Why would this day be any different?