The Lease Agreement

The paper on the table makes a sharp, thin sound

under my thighs as I wait for the knock.

I’m looking at the veins, the way they’re wound

around my wrist like the gears of a clock.

Blue maps of a city I don’t really own.

I’m just the tenant of the bone and the skin,

counting the miles that the muscles have grown,

waiting for the structural failure to win.

The doctor enters with a cold, silver light.

He looks at the charts, at the tally of years.

I’m just a machine that he’s trying to set right,

while I sit in the silence and listen to my ears.