By
some inexplicable oversight
nobody
jeers when I walk down the street.
I
have been allowed to go on living in this
room.
I am not asked to explain my presence
anywhere.
What
posthypnotic suggestions were made; and
are
any left unexecuted?
Why
am I so distressed at the thought of taking
certain
jobs?
They
are absolutely shameless at the bank—
You’d
think my name meant nothing to them. Non-
chalantly
they hand me the sum I’ve requested,
but
I know them. It’s like this everywhere—
they
think they are going to surprise me: I,
who
do nothing but wait.
Once
I answered the phone, and the caller hung up—
very
clever.
They
think that they can scare me.
I
am always scared.
And
how much courage it requires to get up in the
morning
and dress yourself. Nobody congratulates
you!
At
no point in the day may I fall to my knees and
refuse
to go on, it’s not done.
I
go on
dodging
cars that jump the curb to crush my hip,
accompanied
by abrupt bursts of black-and-white
laughter
and applause,
past
a million unlighted windows, peered out at
by
the retired and their aged attack-dogs—
toward
my place,
the
one at the end of the counter,
the
scalpel on the napkin.