Someone always has a brother to help carry your stuff. Someone has a car with which to retrieve you from some damp and dismal street corner, an extra bed where you may crash. Someone will offer you some of their dinner, or breakfast, at least make coffee. Someone will listen to your story and seem interested. Someone will be sympathetic; will make the effort when you are out there, desperate. Someone will offer you advice which you may or may not heed. Someone will suggest a road you could take, a choice you might make. Someone will let you stay longer than you intended, than they intended. Someone will invite their sister over. She will bring homemade cookies and wine. You will drink too much wine. You will fall in love with the sister. Someone will be strumming a guitar and you will recognize yourself in the chords which sound like your vagrant days. You will disgrace yourself by talking too much, by saying you love everybody. And you will mean it. You will forget all your brokenness and that you stared down a cliff. You will forget what a coward you have been in this good loving world where people always have an extra couch, sandwich, bottle of wine, notes that resound in the shaken frame of your body, a brother to pick you off the floor when you fall, and drop you into the vast loving bed of the rest of your life from which you will muddle forth.
