Lance Larsen, a University of Houston graduate, has published two poetry collections: Erasable Walls (1998) and In All Their Animal Brilliance (2005). Individual poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, New York Review of Books, TLS, Grand Street, and The Pushcart Prize 2005. A professor at BYU, he’ll spend winter 2005 in London as part of a study-abroad program. Borrowing Electricity Lance Larsen Everything comes down to numbers but nothing is finite, not me waking at 3:47 a.m. and not fifty feet of power cord snaking out my window. Can sleep be factored or does it dream its own dark prime?  Four days ago, Jacqui miscarried. Last night, Guillermo from next door, looped in power cord, knocked just before midnight. Electricity cut, he said. He made a motion across his throat. We borrow—one day. It was a question but his mouth couldn’t find a place for the question mark. We pay, oh yes. He meant the three Guatemalan workers he shared a one-bedroom with. Their apartment identical to ours, but reversed, as if one had dreamed the other. We pay and we pay. I walk to the window, which puts half a room between me and Jacqui’s slow breathing, and two thirds of a dirty moon flat on the parking lot. Now the math is easy but untrue. One parabola of electricity equals three parking stalls equals five thousand drilling cicadas. And the other end of the cord twists through their sleep. Is the body an abacus that tracks nights alone?  Four mouths, eight eyes flicking back and forth, one breath. Men who baby the yards of the rich and send grimy twenties home inside novelas. Seven-watt Virgin, bathe me in blue patience. Count lost heartbeats, clock radio. I am waiting for 5:00 a.m. mariachi tunes to leak from their room into my body, for mourning and accordions to equal the last Thursday in June.