Borrowing Electricity

Everything comes down to numbers but nothing  is finite, not me waking at 3:47 a.m. and not fifty feet of power cord snaking out my window. Can sleep be factored or does it dream its own dark prime?  Four days ago, Jacqui miscarried. Last night, Guillermo from next door, looped in power cord, knocked just before midnight. Electricity cut, he said. He made a motion  across his throat. We borrow—one day.  It was a question but his mouth couldn’t find  a place for the question mark.  We pay, oh yes. He meant the three  Guatemalan workers he shared a one-bedroom with. Their apartment identical to ours, but reversed, as if one had dreamed the other. We pay and we pay. I walk to the window,  which puts half a room between me  and Jacqui’s slow breathing, and two thirds  of a dirty moon flat on the parking lot.  Now the math is easy but untrue.  One parabola of electricity equals  three parking stalls equals five thousand drilling  cicadas. And the other end of the cord  twists through their sleep. Is the body an abacus  that tracks nights alone?  Four mouths,  eight eyes flicking back and forth, one breath.  Men who baby the yards of the rich  and send grimy twenties home inside novelas.  Seven-watt Virgin, bathe me in blue patience. Count lost heartbeats, clock radio. I am waiting for 5:00 a.m. mariachi tunes  to leak from their room into my body, for mourning  and accordions to equal the last Thursday in June.