Upon my arrival back from summer, work is among the worst is has been: people were fired, resigned in righteous fury, died, and I now can't have staples. As one of the resignations was our science and math teacher, those cores are split between another teacher and me until the sluggish bureaucracy gets around to hiring someone. Though I have a personal interest in science, I do not have the training or materials to teach Living Environment. I am assured the facility has every confidence that I can wing it with moderate googling. My honest estimate is that we won't have a new teacher before winter, if that. For our modest state salaries and the unquestionable attractiveness of STEM teachers for public schools, it is hard to imagine that a math teacher cannot do better (and do good) elsewhere.

Owing to the machinations of the state, my facility will now play host to those boys transitioning from high security facilities to other placements: their parents or, far more likely, private organizations too happy to accept your tax dollars to briefly grant three hots and a cot. My coworkers fret what this could mean for the sanctity of our facility and the safety of their jobs. I tell them, in so many words, to shut up because they have seen this sort of policy change before. We will do this until a pendulum swings the other way. We will not shut down because we are in the rare position that no one else in the system does what we can (where else is New York going to send their mentally handicapped, mentally ill, and LGBTQ kids?). Their perseveration feeds into a narrative meant to keep us jittery and compliant. I internalized years ago that my job will always be in flux, the only constant being that the state won't get rid of it. I don't need to give myself heart palpitations over the newest roll of the die. Another will come shortly to unmake every change hastily instituted.

There is no new blood yet, no students I have not met before who could add flavor and new direction to my teaching. Furthermore, my students are low functioning or preparing to go home in weeks, neither group which tends toward educational vitality. Until that changes, my class time is going to be rudimentary rather than exultant. There is no sense in trying to teach a Karen Russell story to a boy who needs to be able to read Dr. Seuss first, so I will focus on these basics.

Some days, I barely see Amber. I kiss her when I leave in the morning. She comes home from surgeries and paperwork after nine a few times a week, just as I am getting ready for bed. Our time together is confined to sleeping hours. While it is better than an unoccupied bed, I feel her lack in the driftlessness in my afternoons without her, to say nothing of my lack of creativity when it comes to my bachelor dinners: leftovers, some easily cooked protein and rice, or the lasagna I made to provide Amber an easily meal to take.

She promises this will not be forever. One of her coworkers is honeymooning somewhere European, another just gave birth and needs a few months exposure to decide if the baby is cute enough.

I bike to get Amber a small ice cream cake, then walk into town for First Friday, watching a cover band on the corner play Pink Floyd and 90s alternatives while I write across the street. I try to make the most of this time without her because I have no other option beyond sulking, which doesn't do anyone good (save my therapist's bank balance).

"We don't even practice!" the band announces. "We can just do this!"

"It shows," I playfully cheer.

"You want to come here? You think you could do this?" they jeer back.

"Not at all!"

"Nah, he looks like a writer."

"I really am!" I shout. "I have books out about Red Hook. You should read them."

This surprises them, but they seem to believe I mean them only well. The day since getting home from work has been relaxing, remembering better what it is to enjoy my own company and do as I wish without consideration of my doting spouse's state.

I wander home to write a while before Amber returns. We cuddle and eat a heart-shaped ice cream cake decorated with her name as she unfurls stories of her leg amputations and tooth extractions. We speculate what fun our work-interrupted weekend will bring.

With the summer over, I will not have the time to do the work that calls to my soul and to figure myself out more. I will lack Amber's company more than I will have it some weeks. But this is manageable. I can do this.

Come Monday, my outlook is less sunny. My supervisor and coworker call out, leaving only the new teacher and me to cover all the subjects (six cores with differentiation so no two students are quite learning the same thing, six periods, three rooms, two groups of students of varying skills, two teachers, zero preps; the math does not check out). Our population is low, into the single digits - the staff outnumber the residents by a factor of two in each room and a factor of five in the facility as a whole. When our population is more robust, it is markedly easier to keep a class learning, contrasted with a boy who screams at the top of his lungs a tuneless nothing and his classmate who refused to leave the unit. In the middle of one of the lessons I, through some miracle of my exuberant personality, have managed to get my students to care about, the facility shuts down the power to test the generator, something that surely could have been done before school started or after it finished. Once the computer shuts down, I have lost them until everything is online again, and then have to spend until the end of the period trying to get them back to where they were before sending them to the unit with the rest as homework.

I left feeling so drained that I, without hyperbole, have to fight not to cry while doing some grocery shopping. My professional life feels pointless. It would be easy to give up and give in, just handing the kids infantile worksheets and collecting a check. Most of the departments here would not be averse to my showing the kids movies all day every day without any attempt to educate them. As seems to be the attitude, these kids are unlikely to amount to anything. Why put in the effort? Statistically, at least given the present model of "rehabilitation" decided by bureaucrats who have never encountered the residents, they aren't wrong. The state boasts of an 80-90% recidivism rate, something exacerbated when residents - not ours, since we do a better job than any other facility in the state in providing an education - return to the streets without any improvements in reading and math.

I don't do it for the kids, because their cynicism is not wholly unfounded. I do it because I would get even more bored and frustrated if I didn't, but I don't see results. The only kids I have helped are those who didn't need my help to start with. These are my target students: those who do not need more than a thumbs-up to cross the finish line by their own momentum. We get them rarely, maybe a boy or two a year, and we all remember their names long after we have forgotten the ones who tore up books and threatened to rape our loved ones.

That night, Amber tosses in bed, unable to sleep and so unable to let me sleep. She jumps out of bed maybe half an hour after laying down, which is half an hour later than I went to bed because she had to care for all her pets, a process that lengthens weekly as she medicates and hand feeds our perfectly vital kitten. I turn over, but I am allergic owing to her animal ministrations - I ought to make her shower when she returns home from the animal hospital, but it is awkward to order an adult into hygiene for your sake. I am nearly dozing, but I sniffle. She wakes me by kissing me on the shoulder, certain I am crying out my frustrations. Three days into the school year and my wife assumes I am weeping in my sleep.

Locked in what was once the studio - a room I loved, where I felt I could get real work done in my private world - and is now yet another one of the cats' rooms, the kitten decided to scratch at the door for two solid hours before I am to be awake. When my alarm buzzes on my wrist, I rise, exhausted and resentful. A few weeks ago, I had a hold on my mental and physical health.

As I let the kitten out and prepare his food, I openly weep at him that he has to let me stay sane.

Soon in Xenology: 11/9. Zoo.

last watched: iZombie
reading: It Can't Happen Here
listening: Damien Rice