Weather Report for the Night Shift
J.L. Orango
At two in the morning the corridors make their own climate.
A door releases heat, then the medicinal cold
of a room scrubbed after its occupant has gone.
The elevator opens like a brief front of rain.
I carry a stack of clean blankets
past a vending machine whose apple is painted red.
Somewhere a man has been waiting six hours
for a sentence beginning with good news.
The building is full of people whose work
will not appear in the photograph:
the woman replacing a paper towel roll,
the man mending the wheel that would not turn,
the person who finds a lost hearing aid
and keeps looking until someone answers.
At dawn the windows lighten without fanfare.
The forecast says clear skies,
which tells us nothing about the night.
After the Flood, an Inventory
J.L. Orango
One blue mug, without a handle.
Three spoons, bent but faithful.
A photograph freed from its frame,
the faces running together into August.
Two boots from different owners.
The small red bicycle bell
that still rings when shaken.
A wedding invitation with the year dissolved.
On the inventory form
there is a column for condition.
I write: usable, perhaps,
then cross it out.
How much water does it take
to change a thing from lost to found?
The child asks if we can keep the bell.
I say yes. It still knows how to sound.
The Lesson
J.L. Orango
My mother taught me to change a tire
on a road where the shoulder was mostly weeds.
She set the jack beneath the frame
and handed me the handle.
Do not trust a passing car to slow.
Do not trust a bolt because it looks clean.
Do not lie underneath what can come down.
She had no speech prepared about freedom.
She held the flashlight while I worked.
The lug nuts made an ugly little music
when they finally came loose.
Years later, the lesson I remember
is not how to lift a wheel
but how she stood beside me,
light in one hand, keys in the other,
without once reaching in to do it for me.
J.L. Orango is a Canadian writer based in Kamloops, British Columbia. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Literary Yard, Synchronized Chaos, and other journals. Her writing explores memory, family, labor, and the ways ordinary lives change.