Tensile Strength

It was a bird once, or maybe a heart,

when the manager told me the numbers were down.

I sat there and worked the wire back and forth,

feeling the cheap steel go warm between my thumb

and the finger that still has a callous from the keys.

I tried to make it straight again today,

to put it back in the plastic cup

with the staples and the dried-out pens.

But the silver turned dull, a white crack

blooming where the fatigue finally won.

It snapped before it ever got level.

I left the two halves on the laminate

and took my sweater and went.