Because she still won’t sleep alone, you sleep deeplywith her small warm body wrapped in your arms.Because it won’t always be so, you let it be like this.In the night you wake and read Ferrante again, your devicegiving just enough light in the dark. Because you were waitingfor something, something came to you, despite recent despair,despite your intermittent rages. Because you were in need.Because the world seems to be ending more than usual.Because your child in one of her fits flailed an arm,broke a glass all over the supermarket floor, stood aloneby a case of cured meats, weeping, refusing comfort,watched by worried passersby. Because you were in need,the dawn came: those colors, why even try to describeall the colors? And the sea rising darkly to meet them—