Penury | Sada Mukhtasar

I’d scrawl along margins of newsletters
Forsaking the comfort of plain white sheets
Stacked comfortably past my window,
Slinking endlessly in the rolling press
Of the Xerox machine.
The hot paper rolling in the presses
Would evaporate partly like coffee fumes
From my ergonomically ill mug –
Reminiscent of a dead grave revered
By autumn in between.
I’d pick the chilled spoon from the stale coffee
And split the floor along its broken patterns,
Fold my hollow chest along poor folds,
Seek winter warmth in commercial sheets
And transact with my last earning.
Having acquired much needed repose,
I’d bring to lose in a labyrinthine sum
Of disarray of bureaucratic dreams,
Find call bells for a retrieval process
But choose not to ring.