She came to dread the way he would wander
into her office, his eyes flicking over the papers
on her desk as though it offended him
to have to interrupt tasks that were being done
for him, as though the details she was mistress of
would needlessly clutter his manager’s mind.
As he talked of the Big Picture, of who was soon
to die and who to win a prize, the pencil
she held poised a few inches above the text
she’d been correcting when he breezed in
was her only protest. Did it irk him—
the way she kept her shoulders slightly rounded
over the page, the way the graphite stub in her smudged
fingers accused him?
Probably not, as he warmed to his speech;
he was a thinker-aloud, couldn’t have a thought
unless he spoke it out before an obedient listener.
She saw the air thronged with his conceptual
offspring; if she didn’t keep her slack mouth shut
(now he paused, mid-phrase, touching the air
with an index finger just where he saw
his point appear), she might actually swallow
one of his soap bubbles, like a cartoon character
sucking her whole 2-D world
back down. He talked on.
She agreed, she agreed, she seconded his thesis,
and with each murmured yes her certainty mounted:
she would never be one of them—a Director, a Manager,
an Executive Thingy. She didn’t have the ambition.
She was simply a pencil, scratching, pausing,
picking her way down an obscure page.
She liked her fate.
But would she be left alone to enjoy it?
He hovered there—couldn’t bear to release her—
now about to turn and go—but no.
He was settling in her single chair and leaning near
to confide more fully in her.