Vanish Without the Exit

The light in the DMV is a hum in my teeth,

sickly and yellow, a plastic-wrapped grief.

I’m number forty-two on a screen made of glare,

trying to sink through the beige of the chair.

I don’t want to end, I just want to be missed

by the eyes of the clerk and the names on the list.

Across from me, someone has left their old coat,

slumped on the bench like a sinking boat.

It holds the curve of a back and a neck,

a hollowed-out ghost from a person-shaped wreck.

To be just the fabric, the wool and the thread,

and not the loud engine of things in my head.