When I was younger
I spent one idle summer
unemployed
playing volleyball and selling plasma.
Twice a week I’d go and sit,
watching as the alcoholics
tried to squeeze
another bottle from their veins
and flirting with the dark-haired tech
who set my blood to
spinning round in vicious circles
just outside of my body.
Twice a week she’d take my arm
and turn it over in her hands
to find the mark she’d made before,
a healing place
within the hollow of my skin,
then softly tear
a cold new needle
through the forming scar
and open up my body
one more time
to pull my blood apart for me,
The whole thing lasted
just about an hour
and after I was done
I’d take my money and my red cells
off to find a sandwich
and some sand.
I ended that warm summer with a small white mark
inscribed above the vein
in my left arm,
a memory, hand-knitted
to remind me of an idle season’s cost.
For years it has stared up at me,
a silent moment of my past
that I can feel beneath my touch.
Lately, though, I cannot see it when I look,
unless I focus
harder than I should,
and I am left to wonder
if it is so far gone with age that
the echo of the thought
is all that’s left.
Perhaps I need to make fresh scars
to tell the story
of these busy days,
and pull my blood back into view
to mark and see
the time that I have lost
since I’ve forgotten
what it means
to just be idle
in the world.
