Widdershins

a new coworker started on my team this month. this is a brand-new position, not a replacement for someone who left, so we have extra capacity with her on board. (this will become relevant in a moment.) i like her a lot, in part because we both had similar paths into this job of having been union members but not having actually worked for a union or similar org before in an official capacity.

she has two bargaining units and will eventually have three. they're easing her into the third. that's great! none are currently bargaining. that's also great, because like many of us when we start out (myself included), she has no bargaining experience! i am happy that the job is giving her an onramp and a chance to learn as much as possible.

i am not resentful of her at all. i promise. i am resentful of everyone around her/me, though, because when i started, i had six bargaining units and four were in the middle of bargaining, and either everyone thought this was fine or didn't care enough to say anything about how it was not fine. i managed it—after all, i am still here—but i wouldn't say i managed it well, and certainly not in a way that was sustainable (as evidenced by the fact that i now have four bargaining units, a compromise which was made only when i kept getting sick).

In the mornings he fingered each vertebra. He said, would you ever consider curving your arc toward me, his coffee creamer too sweet as I lapped the sick from his tongue.

The evening stained like a new bruise throbbing to guide his way. At home he’d suck a fang, snake bone on chapped lips, bloodless and frail. He said, today I drank the gravel and sank down. I made dinner.

In time I’d take the gold off his cheeks and smear it like conquest. He said, I want to share my hunger with you. I read his future as he strained, his halo spilling, the ichor in the glass in the fridge waiting for tomorrow morning.

When I took him in I imagined the heat of a star sealing a new brand, something I could feel now.

He said, do you ever fantasize about plucking out your own eyeball and seeing the stem droop like a flower dying in a vase.