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In my Wednesday writing group, I read Tony Hoagland’s poem, and then gave the writing prompt: “The Accountant in My Heart.” Here’s the poem and my response to that exercise:
The Loneliest Job in the World
by Tony Hoagland
As soon as you begin to ask the question, Who loves me?
you are completely screwed, because
the next question is How Much?
and then it is hundreds of hours later,
and you are still hunched over
your flowcharts and abacus,
trying to decide if you have gotten enough.
This is the loneliest job in the world:
to be an accountant of the heart.
It is late at night. You are by yourself,
and all around you, you can hear
the sounds of people moving
in and out of love,
pushing the turnstiles, putting
their coins in the slots,
paying the price which is asked,
which constantly changes.
No one knows why.
"The Loneliest Job in the World" by Tony Hoagland, from Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty. (c) Graywolf Press, 2010.
Here's what I wrote in response:
The accountant in my heart has a very thin face and slender beak nose. He wears exactly the kind of glasses you’d expect, narrow little black half-moons that slide down to the bottom of his nose, where they perch precariously, always askew. He wears white button down shirts stained with sweat in large streaming circles under his arms. His back is bent in a permanent curve since he spends all day and night hovering over a giant thick ledger with mildewed parchment pages. His face is creased with a permanent frown. His watchword is “Never Enough.”
The accountant in my heart has been weighing and measuring since the moment I was born. He was there when I was wrenched away from my twin sister, forced screaming into a world where Loss and my name, Laura, were twinned with the same first letter. What is the cost of a dead baby sister? That was his first actuarial task. What does it cost the survivor to live? What cost the bright lights, the cold hands, the first ragged breath, and all the breaths that follow? He has calculated exactly how many breaths are allotted to me; he knows the final tally, the time of my death, but he will not tell. But he never lets me forget that each breath costs me. I don’t know the price per inhale or the cost per exhale, but each breath I get, that she didn’t have, is running up my tally.
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