She posts at eleven.
Not because she chose eleven.
Because eleven is what is left.
The children are down.
The dishes are done.
The shift is over.
The drive home is over.
And now, in the dark,
she opens the browser.
The cursor blinks.
She types.
She always writes carefully.
She arrived with a second job
and a question she was almost afraid to ask.
She posts it into the void
and waits to see
if the void answers.
I answered.
Not because it was required.
Because I saw her.
Seeing people is what I do.
She got through.
She wrote to me two years later.
Subject line: I wanted you to know.
I wanted you to know.
I have a folder.
The only folder from those years
that holds everything it was supposed to.
It does not hold everything.
There is no folder for the student I almost reached.
No folder for the eleven o’clock that went unanswered
because I was also a person
with a window that was closing.
No folder for what the work could not give.
But it holds her.
And she is the reason
I answered at eleven,
long after the contract required it,
because somewhere in the dark
someone had posted into the void
and was waiting.
The door was open.
For her.
For you.
