This is what I don’t want to tell you. Am afraid to say. Shouldn’t. Don’t. Won’t. Want to. Have to. Need you to know. Cannot tell. I want to tell you. What it is. To work. To really work. Work sitting. Sitting so long in an office chair that nothing eases the ache down the right side of your spine, not even straightening your back, creatively slumping or taking too many Ibuprofen. And you cannot stop sitting in that chair. Your knees ache with inconsolable premature arthritis and you cannot straighten them for long because to do so makes you look like you’re not working hard, makes you look like you’re even lazy or don’t take your job seriously. And working overtime all the time is just the nature of the job. As is eating lunch at your desk. And you need this job. Everything and I mean everything depends on it. Your head pounds, sure, the eyestrain feeds it, but your aching neck is worse than all the other varieties of discomfort and pain because hour by hour it is becoming more uncomfortable to hold up your head. Last week your neck ached until you became nauseous and needed to excuse yourself and couldn’t. You were on deadline. As usual. And you were still on the three months of probation because your supervisor reported you to her boss because she was not able to get all of her work done and therefore needed you to take on far more than your job description implied when she hired you. I want to tell you how good it feels to almost make your deadline and be freed from the skyscraper that holds you prisoner in its dungeon and to then walk as fast as you can down Madison Avenue in old heels that need reheeling through the streets of a city where you are anonymous and the finer the clothes the courser the manner. You ask a suited woman for the time and she asks you why you don’t have a watch, sneering as she passes. At that moment, you realize that you’re bleeding through your pants crotch seam. Your heavy bag presses your bones a little harder against cement. Yes, it’s almost cliché, isn’t it? Or just boring. What’s my point? My point is that the job you are working so hard to keep is an improvement over the one before it and the one before it. Now you are asked to think! Though your body is suffering, slowly aging, even dying, your mind is active! Remember the old days of scrubbing slate tables with Brillo pads at 3 a.m. so that patrons could write with chalk on their tabletops while drinking red wine, eating lamb, listening to Moroccan music and laughing at Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times flickering against a wall? Remember that your mother never made as much as you make now at this job you’re not complaining about because to do so is to lose it, so even if you can’t pay your rent, which is due tomorrow, I mean today, you graduated from college and have health insurance. Remember that your grandmother worked in a factory all of her life and as a child picked one hundred pounds of cotton per summer day so that she could buy her own clothes, shoes and a coat for the school year. My, how things have changed, she says when you tell her about your kids’ extracurricular horseback riding, music and dance lessons, how they won’t do their chores and want their own cell phones. She remembers bits of blood on every finger, beads of sweat sliding down her legs under heavy dungarees and hiding the money she made under her mattress at the age of nine.
There. I said it. That’s it.
No. There’s more. One more thing.
This is what I don’t want to tell you:
The check did not arrive.
The job’s filled. Position aborted.
No vacancies. Your card has been rejected. The deadline
was yesterday. You did not
qualify. It’s time
to pack your room.
We are getting a divorce.
I have cancer.
He is dead. She
gone. I left him
for another man. For a woman.
She left me. It is over. Done.
Your puppy is gone.
The good guy turned bad. The buildings
collapsed. We are at war.
Your daddy is going away.
We are broke. You’ll live
with your grandparents. This may
be goodbye. Your daddy
is dead. We have to move
again. She has perished.
The plane—
I am sorry. Your only hope
is for all you still love
to be enough
to keep you going when bone tired
you hold the baby
in darkness, her tiny, innocent mouth
working at your breast. As you struggle
to carry the cold, metal end
you are not strong enough to carry.
As you straighten your back
and adjust the height of your chair.
As you stare at the typed page in your veined hand
because you do
have a choice. And you want.
You are hungry
to prove me wrong and that makes you strong.