The Cost of Thinking

We are sitting at the table with the receipts

and a calculator that keeps giving us

the wrong kind of answer.

She pulls off the reading glasses,

pinching the bridge of her nose

as if she could squeeze the numbers

into something smaller, something manageable.

When she lets go, the skin doesn't bounce back.

There is a deep vertical notch there,

a permanent tally mark for the mortgage

and the roof leak and the long years

of making a dollar do the work of three.

It’s a scar she earned just by looking at the truth.