I Let a Homeless Man Stay One Night and Came Home to a Different Apartment

be gone. People left. Help arrived with conditions attached, or it arrived briefly and withdrew. But at seven in the morning Derek was dressed, brace strapped, hair still damp from the shower, my toolbox open on the floor in front of him, arranged with a familiarity that told me he had been working with tools for a long time.

“I’m not leaving until continue reading …