The Interest Rate

I’m standing at the mirror with a button in my hand,

trying to make the fabric obey a small command.

But then I see the tremor, a rhythmic, tiny jerk,

a ghostly bit of physics that has started on its work.

It’s the same slow, shaky language that my father’s fingers spoke

before the light inside of him eventually just broke.

It’s a debt that’s written in the blood, a tax upon the skin,

a long and heavy shadow that is finally moving in.

I look down at the counter where the cast-iron skillet sits,

leaving black and rusted rings in the marble’s tiny pits.

Some things you can’t scrub away, no matter how you try,

they’re just part of the furniture until the day you die.