Hospital time

She comes home late, well after the kids are asleep, whispers into the hallway they’ve spent a lifetime building, says I left him to sleep, I’ll go back in the morning. The kids asked you to tell scary stories for bedtime, blissfully unaware the new scares that sit in your breath. 

You cry the whole way home on the L train. 

She speaks new secrets into the Negronis you keep pouring each other, you both pause between the weighted truths, say, This is hospital time, say, This is cancer time, think, everything is different now but between you it’s really more of the same, there’ll be new tests in the morning but between you it’s really just more of the same and when you cry the whole way home on the L train you feel nothing but gratitude for a city that will let you wring your chest open in public at 12:34 am, feel nothing but faith in hospitals with secret exits to fairy lights and taxi cabs that show up in the rain, feel nothing but hope in relationships that brave the cold of winter to endure another year, another decade together  

When you cry the whole way home on the L train you feel  nothing

but light.