We’re breaking into your apartment
through your bedroom window.

The maintenance guy’s ladder
is propped against the sill.

I climb the ladder rung by rung,
it shivers, I try not to look down.

                                                Three hundred

miles north, my father beds down in a van by the Connecticut River.
Snow tires rim-­deep in the silt. He has a wool horse blanket

tacked inside the windshield. A pair of extra pants bunched
into a pillow. He has a paper bag of partially smoked butts.