Day Job

Assume, for the sake of argument,

that the desperation hasn’t seeped

into Sunday night, swallowing dinner,

the table, the round Hopperesque light

in which your wife, in her best 1950s

cone bra, raises the fork to her mouth,

and that your own sadness doesn’t sit

in the chair next to you, invisible, but

for a slight difference in the brushstroke,

a not-shadow on the wall that can’t be seen

in the gallery, but that the viewer senses anyway.

Let’s assume that the world isn’t

intense pastel infused with grit and fluorescence,

and that as you crease this week’s pay stub

into your palm, you don’t think of the word stub

as the secret name for your heart.