She eases me to her breasts as a mother would a wounded child. This has been one of those days and it's about work, always about being employed and that slip that comes around when your time runs out and the last paycheck that dwindles more each day because of the phone service and support the daughter and former wife need to get by, and about the change gathered from the penny jar and coat pockets just to buy cigarettes and have bus money to travel twelve blocks on a freezing night to eat a warm meal from a woman who disappeared four months prior with a man driving a red truck, after a year or so of things not working out. Against her the hollow resonation of something long faded, a body whose rhythmic dance once swayed easy with my touch, even when the rent was late and we sat nights laughing crazy in the dark. Then it was about work and being under qualified, always about that fifty cent annual raise and skipping time on the coffee break, and it's about leaving this woman just after midnight when the last whistle shocks the cold with a metallic moan.