Every morning
I open the ledger
before I open my eyes.
There is no ceremony to it:
just numbers already waiting,
ink that never quite dries,
columns that remember more than I do.
Balance: insufficient.
I take inventory
before I move:
what does it cost
to sit up,
to stand,
to be a person today.
Everything has a price.
Shower: moderate expenditure.
Conversation: variable.
Work: catastrophic, but necessary.
Pain: already paid, non-refundable.
I do the math anyway.
Shift numbers between columns
like they might forgive me
if I’m clever enough,
if I round down
the cost of being alive.
I ration.
Spend less on joy,
it has hidden fees.
Reduce movement.
Defer rest
until it becomes unavoidable interest.
There is no surplus.
There has never been a surplus.
Only the illusion
of breaking even.
Weekends are where I gamble:
take out loans against a body
already in debt,
borrow strength from a future
that cannot afford it.
Work the hours.
Pay the dues.
Smile through the deficit.
Then Monday comes
like a foreclosure.
I collapse into it;
sleep as a form of repayment,
a partial, inadequate installment
toward a balance
that does not shrink.
Tuesday, Wednesday?
I negotiate.
Cut corners.
Reduce expectations.
Move carefully through the arithmetic
of survival.
Thursday, I start counting ahead.
Friday, I prepare the lie again;
that this time
the numbers will hold.
They never hold.
There is always leakage:
small at first,
a miscalculation here,
a forgotten cost there,
until suddenly
the equation buckles
and I am overdrawn again.
Pen scratching through paper,
crossing out what I thought I could be.
I audit myself constantly.
Where did it go?
What did I waste it on?
Why does it cost more now
to do the same small things?
There is no answer
that changes the total.
Only blame,
neatly itemized.
And still
I keep the books.
Because not working
is immediate collapse;
all accounts frozen,
everything falling due at once.
Better to stagger,
to stretch the debt
across days and weeks and months,
to pretend
this is management
and not slow insolvency.
I am so tired
of calculating.
Of translating existence
into numbers I cannot meet,
of measuring my worth
in what I can still afford to do.
There is no line item
for rest.
No column
for mercy.
Only this endless balancing:
this careful, failing arithmetic
of a body
that spends itself
faster than it can be replenished.
And tomorrow
I will open the ledger again,
run my fingers over the figures,
and try
once more
to make something impossible
add up.
