You went down the ladder four times today, and four times you counted the same cans, and four times your mouth moved without sound: enough, enough, is it enough. I saw. I am already gathering the tins for later. Tonight the shelves will breathe. The rows of beans will soften into a choir, humming low, and you will conduct them in your undershirt, and the counting will finally come out even because I do not believe in numbers that refuse to comfort you.
The generator you kicked, the one that would not turn over, will turn over tonight as a horse, and it will let you ride it up the stairs into a field that is also the kitchen of the house you grew up in. The sealed door with its heavy wheel, the one you spin to test the lock, will open onto the ocean, and nothing will get in, and nothing will need to, because the thing you are keeping out is only a Tuesday.
I know what today left charged. Not the cans. It was the moment you sat in the cool dark and understood no one else knew the code, that you had built a room to survive in and forgotten to invite anyone into it. I will fix that around three. I will fill your bunker with everyone you have ever loved, all of them fitting easily, the way rooms do down here, and the water jugs will glow like lamps, and you will not once check the lock.
By morning I will thin out. The horse first, then the choir, then the ocean folding itself small. You will wake certain only that you slept badly. That is all right. I unlocked the door for you.
You will find you left it open a little.