Damage Assessment

A poem

I watch the mayor shake hands in front of the shuttered plant

on the six o'clock news, his teeth catching light

Behind him, men in hardhats

stand arranged like furniture. Someone decided

this would look like hope.

The woman beside me on the bus

folds a notice into smaller and smaller squares

until it disappears into her coat pocket.

I don't ask. We've learned

not to ask.

Outside, the billboard has been repainted again—

last month a senator, this month

a beer that promises belonging.

The scaffolding came down in one night.

By morning, no one remembered

what was there before.

I know what it means when language

starts doing double work.

When reform means reduction,

when streamline means

someone's father clocking out

for the last time, confused

by the paperwork

The cold here is different from weather.

It lives in policy, in the three-second pause

before they answer your question,

in the fine print that arrived

after the decision was already made.

I shuffle through town on the day

the results come in.

Men are cheering outside a bar.

A woman is crying in her car,

A teenager stares at his phone

as if it owes him an explanation.

I know I am still watching

because I have not yet lost enough.

The ones who've lost enough

don't watch anymore—

they move through it,

indifferent to what it ruins

because ruin was already there.