Friday 6 April 2012

06.04.12

A Water Cooler Moment

(After Relationship Manager)

Lee Reed closes the door to his wafer-thin-walled office,
he twizzles the nob to close the venetian blind
and walks to the corner of his room. He feel like a dunce,

feels a need to urinate, feels the lump in his throat,
the fattening tongue that has, since childhood,
signalled tears. More business accounts have closed

this month than are acceptable. His boss warned him:
first the bonus will go and then the job,
(and then the wife he is sure). Lee spends his nights

playing guitar in a rock 'n' roll band. If he plays loud enough,
for a second, the fear might go away. Tears never come.
His hands claw upwards like tight cones, his head

tips back and swells, his mouth a hat-brim circle,
his thoughts turn to liquid - heavy, cold water
that weighs down through him. Panic attack?

He tries to look down but can't. His legs refuse to move.
His skin turns transparent, like toughened plastic
and his office takes on the curve of a fish-eye lens.

He feels shrunk to the size of a child. A hand-size cave
is excavated from his belly. Help, he screams, like a bubble
escaping. A girl enters the room, acts like he isn't there,

frilling the limp leaf on his desk plant. An impulse purchase.
She walks up to Lee and takes a styrofoam cone
from where his hand used to be. Flips a nob at his belly button.

Lee feels his fear emptying, glug-glug-glug, a little.
The girl returns to the desk, waters the plant, exits. A bubble
erupts from the belly of the water cooler in the wafer-thin-walled office.

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