At night, I press the flat part of my hand
against each door, locked and alarmed.

Once, the code was my mother’s birthday.
I’d thought I could step all the way out

onto the concrete stoop into the sunshine, look up
at the clear blue sky and hold the whole place

in between my shoulders, compressed down
to the size of rib misplaced holding skin away

from the twirls of red veins. Now I know I like to imagine
an electric company floods the building, perceived abandoned

by suits years ago. In all my dreams, water drips
through the ceiling tiles, unnoticed by nurses, elders and cooks.

The watery smell of rust and urine bloats the body
of the place, the glass shell cracking at the expansion.

Freshwater fish take residence in sunrooms,
my mother’s office, my grandmother’s empty desk,

in vending machines and in my father’s garage.
Down the hall, a nurse starts chest compressions

on a woman awaiting an ambulance. I stand guard,
watch the movement of the water slide through

the spidered skeleton of the space enclosed, the walk-in
freezer the only spot that still holds air inside.

You’re scaring the fish, I say into the water,
They came here for care, too. 

It doesn’t quite add up yet—how the fish got
through the alarmed doors, why they wanted in here.

Who did they think was still here to care?
My mother left, I say to the fish.

They look at me with their fisheyes.