Office # 120 Claine Keily

There are secret punishments designed
for the types capable of grief and heartbreak

When she is there
in the office
showing what it is that makes her tremble
they tell her
she has been mistaken
that she must pretend to be a man
or at least sit invisible
behind the cubicle wall

But her wild precarious years
leave flowers on her desk each morning
they bloom with insolence
in the same way
she, a girl child
had to demand her mother's adoration

There as they work in cheap printed shirts
she witnesses the various forms
of their dilapidation
but never speaks to them of this
in the same way as her mother taught her
not to pick at scabs