On her shopping list, my mother
writes X
instead of tampons, shame
eclipsing language.
A periodic sentence: one
in which the main clause
is withheld until the end, landing like the clunk
from a vending machine.
Press #,
then make your selection.
In the bathroom, the sanitary dispenser
is broken, pads stacked
against the mirror
next to the sharps container. Blood
on one toilet seat, piss
on the others. Punch fuck HR
in smeared ink on a stall door,
our only exertion
of power. Box cutter,
gloves, earplugs connected
by a plastic wire. Three swipes
of a badge, # # #.
I never reported
my body. Not its jammed thumb
or the gouge from a pallet’s
exposed nail or, much earlier,
the cramps
that left me vomiting. Not the insidious
signifiers of overuse either,
the pain that swelled
into a constant, eventually alleviated
by pins and needles, first seven hours
into my shift, then
six. Then four.
The smiley faces
on the online assessment scale shift
from green to red, become
tight-mouthed, begin to cry. How
to rank the invisible,
verify it. My expression
unpinched in the mirror,
skin unbloodied.
Mohammed tells me that in Malaysia,
the welders
work without protective visors,
drip salt water
into their eyes after
every shift. Says it works
just as well. Soft
American that I am, I ask
if it hurts. (Another
periodic sentence.)
Later, during stand-up, our manager
praises the work ethic of a woman
with a cardboard allergy,
her dedication to building
boxes for ten hours a day, long sleeves,
scarf swaddling
her face, eyes
rimmed red. Money
and a historic lack of health insurance:
the reasons
that at nineteen I drew lines
in Sharpie on my foot
to track how far an infection
spread, tendrils
of heat crawling
from the gash.
We’re always trying to decide
what’s bad
enough.
Medical staff on-site means
access to Icy Hot, Band-Aids,
popsicles. Only in summer
do the ambulances wait
on standby
outside the loading dock. How to parse
endurance, its sprawling
syntax, its patient realizations.
I tell myself
it wasn’t masochism
that kept me silent, but the consequences
of living in a body
that knows too well the intimacy
of pain,
its inevitable squeezing fist.
How thankful I should be
for the vending machine that dispenses,
with the swipe
of my badge, the soft recoil
of a button, generic Advil
and Tylenol
for free,
never used enough
to discover the limits
of its generosity.