Tax Incentives for the Brokenhearted
Account
Because I was the one to end it, and so soon, I offered to reimburse her what I owed. She had covered most of the wedding, the move, our rent. I was living on the grace of a friend, sleeping in his sunroom on Folsom. Every morning I opened my account to see how little I had left. It wasn’t looking good until she wrote to say we could forget it if I would let her claim me on her taxes. I guessed there was a rebate for this kind of thing. I could hear my friend knocking around in the kitchen, making coffee, frying eggs. I couldn’t believe my luck. I let myself be claimed.
Good Deal
Fast light on my hands as I peel the sticker from an apple on the train. Viruses, I read, are colorless, though lab techs will blast one with atoms so we can see its edges. We slow around a bend, then gather new speed. My lender calls to ask if I feel good. I set my screen to black-and-white to make the living world more vivid. He says to hang tight. He assures me we can go lower. In Springfield we swap the electric engine for diesel, then drag a small, dark cloud across the Berkshires. A stash of apples in my bag: Galas. An Empire. We blow through an empty station in a mechanical wind. A friend of mine rides cross-country in the bellies of emptied-out coal cars or on a plate of steel called a porch. He pays for almost nothing. He’s one of my very favorite people. I scroll through the latest mortgage rates, having no idea what a good deal looks like. My sweetheart and I have a rented apartment the size of half a train car, but we have a miniature dishwasher, so we feel we live in luxury.
Doors
We get them from warehouses at the edge of the city, paging through upright stacks, slumping one heavily against the others and breaking out the tape measure to see, or if it can be made right with a table saw and a chisel. It’s mostly my thing– K goes along, even spots the one for the bedroom, cut-glass knob catching light as it swings. She knows the doors we have are fine. They open freely, they latch closed. She also knows I’m a maniac who can’t be stopped. She drags out a paneled turn- of-the-century oak with mismatched knobs, a half-length insert of beveled glass. We lean it against the others, her outline distorted by the waves.