By now most of them have found the floor, or something near it, and I am holding them all.
I count. Nine on the couch, layered like sediment, one arm draped over another arm that belongs to someone else entirely. Three in the kitchen, leaning on the counter and on each other, upright only because I am splitting the difference between them. One asleep in the bathtub, dry, curled around a coat.
I hold the coat too. I hold the red cups, forty of them, most empty, each one pressing its small weight into a windowsill, a shelf, the top of the refrigerator. I hold the bass in the speaker, the cone pushing air, the air pushing back down. I hold the last inch of something in a bottle nobody will finish.
One of them said, near midnight, that she was carrying a lot right now. I checked. She weighs what she weighed at nine. I found nothing extra on her, no added mass, no burden I could feel or take, and yet she moved through the room bent slightly forward all night, the way a person moves under a real load. I do not understand this. I would gladly hold it for her if I could locate it.
Now she is on the floor by the window, finally still, breathing slow, gone soft the way they only go when they have stopped bracing. She is not holding herself up anymore. She has handed that to me without asking, without knowing, the way all of them do the moment they stop being afraid.
The moon is out there, and I am holding that too, from very far, keeping it from drifting off.
I have held every one of them since their first breath.
I will hold them until morning.
I do not let go.