Printer

The lime-green sheets spool out, one after another after another, a thousand gone, a thousand to go, and for every new thousand, another thousand printed forms needed: and still he does not use me against the beige device.

The boxes are ticked, one after another after another, thousands gone, thousands to come, by the thousands of strangers passing through the waiting room: and still he does not use me against their indifferent eyes.

I am a fist, why am I not inside that machine, or that person's skull? I ask him and ask him and ask him, a thousand times today, a thousand times yesterday, a thousand times tomorrow.

Perhaps one day he will answer profoundly: how many hands do such work? Indifferent, bored, quietly hateful? Thousands yesterday. Thousands today. Thousands tomorrow. And how many reach to my face, flying forward with their fists? Or feeling the contours of my face with their soft finger-tips? None yesterday, none today. Why tomorrow should I be any different?

But he does not answer profoundly. Instead, he unfurls his fists into fingers, as if petals falling from a flower, and stuffs them into his pockets, his pies, his nose.