I am assembling a bunk bed in an otherwise empty bedroom and the metaphors abound. I am profoundly aware that I am stacking bed frames and stories upon stories upon stories.

I am here because I chose this hard, this stack of hards. I chose to leave a marriage of 17 years this last year. In this, I am not heroic. I am merely a woman who could not see a future where she could model good parenting and good partnership simultaneously, given the way a life’s fabric can shred and fray. I am here, perhaps, because I lacked imagination of a future where we rebuilt our sinking IKEA bed plank by plank. Or maybe I am here because I leaned in to my imagination, where I believed I might be capable of starting over, of co-parenting and reducing the atmospheric tension, and betting on myself.

This bunk bed will not build itself, which is fine as I enjoy the tedious meditation of Allen wrenching screws and double-checking instruction manual diagrams. My co-worker tells me I should invite a friend over to help me, but I have always enjoyed the solitude of a manual task. The times when I have had to share a job and to communicate to someone else the precise logistical maneuvers I intend to make, (rather than simply winging it) has always exposed my feverish independence. I am a firstborn with a stubborn streak and yet I am utterly at peace as I hex key my way through each bar and beam of this bunked contraption.

My bunkmate of 17 years was remarkably gifted in curiosity. He wanted to know how a thing was made, how the machine was engineered, what made a person tick. He knew how to build a thing before he set about doing the dang thing. He knew what people needed before they knew themselves. I could never project so far; my high beams were always too dim. I muddled through, killing plants and misassembling dressers so that the drawers clunked off the rails every time they opened.

This bunk bed is not a twinset but a full-over-full mattress bunk bed for the children whose limbs and senses of self are growing. Their inward and outward journeys are bewildering and beautiful to me. I am the woman who once lied on their bedroom floors for hours until they were fast asleep, but now I assemble the beds they will prefer I never come near, not even to wash the sheets they deny ever need to be washed. They are close siblings and will not allow the other to be left behind, but they will undoubtedly fight over who will get stuck with top bunk. They will stay up late debating the deeper meanings of Kendrick Lamar lyrics. Bars, man.

I carry long metal spindles and hook them into the strange catch-holes of this bedframe. This bunk bed was bought with Amazon gift cards from thankful student families who could not possibly have known how they are allowing me to build something new for my little family. How they are giving my children, and perhaps their mom, as well, a place to find rest.