The Body's Receipt

The woman in the call center had a voice like sandpaper

and a script that ended in a dead-end street.

The hold music was a tinny loop of nothing

while the kitchen clock chopped the afternoon into cubes.

I pressed two fingers against the soft part of my wrist,

counting the thuds, the frantic, small rebellion.

Under the skin, the veins branch out in blue ink—

a map of a city where the rent is always rising

and the buses never come for people like me.