recompense

The radio crackled, the usual admonitions about traffic and explorations of the demography of war. It was all sunlight and the glint of steel, exhaust fumes and tarmac and a hazard every mile. Something so strange about an old commute, revived after so much time buried in rocks and dirt. Something so strange about a life that just won't be murdered, moving again towards another standing still. The radio spit static, the station all but faded, so far from the source.

Plodding through the paperwork, proving myself for a little taste of further uncertainty. The conference room quite, office types flitting from one concern to the next, that perpetual water cooler feel of the sort of workplace I have never known. I pause between scribbles-- almost everyone knows me. Long time no see, I thought it was you, looking good. Pleasantries and levity, from the root to the bough. From the earth to the sky of the predictable, all air conditioning and the hum along of that florescent sky. At least I didn't have to dress up. There is only so much summer can endure.

Waiting at the Doc in a Box for the requisite physical, folding arms to avoid rubbing elbows, caught in the flow of so many interrupted lives. Cell phones and epithets, scorn and sighs and kids in scrubs. I wait and am weighed, dance on request and piss as instructed. The tubercular scratch just beneath the skin bleeds in contemplative drops. The med tech laughs in all the right places. Outside the sky is coddled fire and fitful steel. I start the car and ease into traffic. Made from the stretch of hours and the condolence of crowds, I move again to stand in place. Everything left price and recompense.