It’s the end of day six. The alert sounded at 10:35 pm. Now it’s 11:14. Sitting in a dark room surrounded by people but feeling so alone.

My family is here. I carefully set up their mattresses three hours ago. Got everything in place so they had somewhere to fall when they made it here. My husband’s job is to sleep here with the kids. My job is to take care of the baby. It gets cold in here, loud. He always ends up sleeping on the floor while the kids get the mattresses. My toddler curls up snuggly against him. He falls asleep with them, on their mattresses under the long, hard table. A mess of blankets, pillows and tangled limbs. I get to go home and sleep on my bed in between sirens, but I get up, go back and forth, hold and soothe the baby.

The days are okay. The kids can play and color and eat and watch and read. They’ve taken up gardening with our downstairs neighbors. They dug a garden, built an enclosure, planted cherry tomatoes and parsley and carrots and passion fruit and flowers. The sirens come and we can’t predict when, but we are awake and ready and simply run to the shelter where we congregate with all of our neighbors and friends.

But the nights are different. I’m scared to go to sleep, I wait for the first blare of the warning signal with intense dread. The darkness of the night pours through me and fills me. Tonight my boys wanted to start at home. The warning went off and I had to shake them and shout to wake them enough to get out of bed and walk to the shelter. They are so discombobulated. My eleven-year-old son looks around and he’s so confused. He’s looking for his coat on the hook. He and my two-year-old have matching fleece jackets. And in his bleary-eyed confusion he takes the smaller one and puts it on. He walks ahead of me with his brother, I walk behind holding the baby and encouraging my sleepy five year old. He clutches at the size two coat, hardly noticing it’s nine sizes too small. My five-year-old is so brave and so scared. She’s never walked on her own in the middle of the night. She’s tired but determined and puts one foot in front of the other. I have one goal: to get her into the miklat before the siren blares. That sound will terrify her, so I quietly urge and encourage her, whispering so as not to wake the baby in my arms. We get to the miklat. My seven-year-old had demanded she go to sleep there so she’s already there.

Last June, my girls found safety in us. Now they find safety in the miklat. We arrive and she’s already there and my nine-year-old falls beside her. My five-year-old finds her place at the foot of the mattresses, perpendicular to her siblings rather than parallel, and in no time at all her brother’s leg is thrown over her waist. My husband follows me with the two-year-old and finds him a spot and snuggles against him, soothing down his cry. I can’t find my oldest. I don’t see him in the tangle of bodies. Until I see him slumped on a chair next to the table, uncomfortable angles and hard surfaces, with his too-small jacket, glasses perched on his nose. I’m holding my baby, rocking him to sleep, otherwise I’d move my son to a mattress on the floor, but instead I just… watch him helplessly. My baby finally falls back asleep and I set him, too, on a mattress I had laid out earlier. We are surrounded by little bodies sleeping under tables and big bodies protecting the little ones and lots of chairs and lots of people, standing and sitting, in a dark, dark room, left dark so the children can sleep.

The siren blares, my children don’t hear it, we sit and we wait, and then we can leave. For some reason I’m sitting and writing instead of waiting because my wakeful waiting is too lonely while I watch the rest of my family huddled together. I am surrounded by heavy breathing and little snores. Everyone awake has left but I dread going back. Walking down the dark and cold road by myself into an empty and dark house to put my baby back down and fall asleep only to be woken five or ten minutes later by another loud, jarring warning. It’s the end of day six and I’m feeling pretty tired.

During the day I stay strong for my kids but at night I’m alone with it all. There’s a baby crying here now so I’ll take my own back home, to the dark and the quiet. The heat is on. I’ll snuggle in my comforter. Until the loud warning signal shakes me to my feet, again. But I can’t leave my son slouched over the hard table. I pick him up and drag him to the mattress where my baby lies asleep. I step on my two-year-old, who is lying next to the chair, and he cries out. I guide my older son onto the mattress and he pushes against the baby, his body covering the pacifier that had fallen out of my baby’s mouth. The baby bolts awake, bright eyes searching mine in the darkness. Then my son mumbles to bring his bigger jacket at the next siren. I sigh in relief, for some reason, that he’s not so vulnerable that he hadn’t even noticed. But he does continue to wear it.

We go home. I sterilize a new pacifier. I put it in my baby’s mouth and he settles. I lay out the size 11 blue jacket next to my own, ready to grab at the next siren. It’s 12:06. The beginning of this endless night which is a continuation of today and inseparable from the long tomorrow.