She Sleeps

The night I got robbed, I couldn’t move. 

I was 18, youngest one in the shelter, lying on the smoking bench out back. I’d come in late with too many pills in my system and a stomach full of whatever some partygoer handed me in a paper bag. The city lights felt like stars pressed against my skin, and I kept falling in and out of some kind of dream.

I remember the warmth of her hand, not kind, just familiar. 

It slid into my bra like it had a right to be there. She smelled like cigarettes and fabric softener. I wanted to stop her. Wanted to say, “Don’t.” But my mouth was underwater. My arms were too far away from me.

I saw her take the bills. Sixty bucks.

I passed out again.

The next morning, I told the other women. A few of them were just as hardened as her, but something about an old woman stealing from a passed-out kid? That crossed a line. They told the staff. And then she was gone.

Just like that.

Later, we saw her.

She was lying on the steps of the church across the street, half-shadowed in the outline of the cross above her. Not dead — just sleeping. Or pretending to sleep. Her luggage was with her, some bags and a busted-up suitcase, and she was alone.

A few of the women yelled at her through the fence. One called her a bitch. One just laughed. I said nothing.

She didn’t move. Didn’t look up.

She had kids, she used to say. But we never saw them. Maybe they’d stopped seeing her.

And now, there she was. On the steps of God’s house.

Not inside. Not on the sidewalk.

But on the threshold.

Maybe she was asking for forgiveness. Maybe she was hiding in the shadow of it.

I don’t know.

But she stayed there, in that in-between place.

And I stayed behind the fence,

watching her sleep — hating her for finding peace before I ever did.