I am holding forty-one of them in a line against a wall, and every one is leaning. This is my favorite thing they do. A shoulder set to the tile, a hip cocked, one whole body poured into another as if I were not already carrying both. They lean on me by leaning on each other. They just call it the second name.
I hold the coffee-colored liquid in their cups, tipping gently as they sway, and I keep it in. I hold the phones lit up in their hands, and their hands, and the sweat sliding down the small of a back toward the floor, which is mine, which everything comes to eventually. Above us I hold the whole thumping building, and above that, patient, the moon, which they never look at from in here.
One of them is crying by the sinks. She keeps saying she can't carry all of this, and I checked, carefully, because I check everything. Whatever she means weighs nothing. It is not in her arms, not on her shoulders, it did not register on me at all. And yet I watched her fold at the waist over the basin as though I had doubled down on her, as though I had finally gotten heavy.
I have not. I never change. Something I cannot feel is bending her lower than I ever could, and her friend has both arms around her now, taking a load I cannot even find.
I do not understand it. But I understand the arm around her. I understand leaning.
Lean. Slide down the wall if you have to. The floor is right where I left it.
I have you. I have always had you.
I do not know how to do anything else.