Reading Braille
It took me longer than the others, my
coworkers, to learn to read the serrated
subtext that formed the real contours of
my job. It
looked simple enough, a wash
cycle of tasks on a dial that, when
performed in the proper order, with
enough heart, would yield a tidy load
rinsed clean of the stains on the knees of
those driven into the dirt by fate, me
smelling like roses, bearing the weight
of my brothers, sins scrubbed, pure. That, and it
paid steady if not very much. My boss
was a profane Brit, a little keg
of a man, chain smoking, hair flying,
eternally proud of The One Shot, one
meaningless leaf of innovation on
one tiny branch on one spindly tree
in a forest denuded of trees. His
only advice to me as I set sail
on my first case was to confide that
the man I was to see was a “fucking
malingering nigger”, driving the nail
home with one fat, stained index finger,
a miracle of concision, his
expectations laid bare while I nodded
in (disbelief, disgust, assent?), my first
lesson, a blind man learning to read braille.
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