When the Answer Came

I've been praying for this job for a year,

prayed in the car, in the early mornings,

prayed like prayer was a skill I could master,

like if I just believed hard enough,

held the wanting tight enough,

it would have to come true.

And it did.

They called this morning.

I said yes before the sentence finished.

And then, before I could feel good about it,

I opened my calendar,

and there were the two dates,

staring at me,

refusing to be ignored:

The start date in six weeks,

marked in red,

clean and certain.

The surgery date four weeks after that,

my mother's,

the reason I wanted stability,

the reason I took the prayer seriously,

the reason I begged for this.

And now I have the job

and I can't be there.

I'm standing in my kitchen,

holding my phone,

trying to figure out how to call them back,

how to say no to the answer,

how to give back the thing

I've been asking for,

because it arrived

in the shape of an impossible choice,

and I can't be in two places,

can't be the daughter and the employee,

the stable one and the present one,

the one who got her life together

and the one who stays.

So I'm going to have to choose.

And whatever I choose

will be wrong.