Same Sum.

soberly reading the comics on the bus to work,
she wonders whether they were ever meant for more
than a forced breath

there’s something in quiet laughter:
the optometrist prescribing lenses for short-sightedness,
people-watching people watching you,
or this poem
, drunkenly stumbling over one of your own convictions

she looks around at all the like faces
, eyebrows narrowing to peregrine wings,
and thinks:
to be driven is but a bus ride to the office

she never noticed how thin the fog here is, like denial
, as she’s back after days spent rediscovering an unfluorescent sun,
having taken bereavement leave from work again
to mourn the week’s end

expectedly, they are thrown from their briefly owned morning
to form a collective of exiting

taking stage direction from street signs
, those well-employed ritualize the same scene daily, like Salah,
hoping to transcend higher than a skyscraper aspires,

but alas, the temptation to high-rise seems forever a better card

slumping back into her electric [office] chair
a slim, if multi-figure, budget clamps her to the seat
, only the commas reminding her to breathe

she crunches numbers to no where
like teeth to sleep
until all is dead done

recalling that: adding zeros
is always the same sum

she hoped to be working on her manuscript
during this slice of day
about a woman who enters into a romantic relationship
with a park bench,
which she had yet to start

it was really about the heated seat of it
(the affair and the procrastination)

her schedule sprawled open, hopeless,
she tries to pencil her self in
, but the graphite just won’t stick
— time on a Hermann grid

sure, leaden executives deserve this:
the monotony of thoughtless ticks,
the key clicks of deducing human review

like a feebly beating heart
, but their inferiors — the work-weak — are the real M-Fers

the way they execute tasks
as if for treason

to password protect themselves from themselves
in the name of surety
— that tightly sewn lie

security is:

hanging by a thread
that refuses to unwind