She cries.

“I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do, I just don’t know what to do!”

A tremor in my voice, “I can’t tell you. I don’t know.”

I’m afraid of her despair.

I want to hold space, but I’m afraid.

The phone is heavy.

I rest my elbow on the brass headboard, leaning into its solidity for support.

She says she can’t go to the gym. That’s how bad it is.

But she can go get a spray tan.

“Get your jacket on. Take the first step. It’s momentum.”

She cries again, the high-pitched kind.

“Should I come over?”

I’m at a loss.

I don’t want to come over.

“I can meet you at the carport. Do you need me to drive?”

She doesn’t want to go to the gym. She can’t. She’s repeating sentences, phrases, words.

 

Once, on a train ride through the open plains of New Mexico, I saw them,

Rocky Mountain elk, in rushing herds, locomotive racing,

my face pressed into the dirty window, wondering where they’re heading,

asking myself the same, on an Amtrak, mid-winter, heading home, where I no longer belonged.

I couldn’t cry then, but those sleek animals, full of grace and urgency, hollowed me,

gutted my very being, and I sat soulless, unable to move forward or turn back–

blurring through space and time, boundless but not free.

 

I’m empty now, too. I can’t help you.