Assembled (After Simic)

IT WAS TENTATIVE, how I assembled myself. The way a box fan picks up radio stations to piece together shreds of evening news in the dusk of an emptied living room.
I heard my neighbors rustle against each other like wet leaves. It was the part of the test I tend to fail. I slept alone, on the verge of someone’s shadow. I walked Speed Avenue as families ate silent dinners in simple light.
A man smoking beneath the movie theater’s sign said that the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography. But I could have it backwards. Couples filed from the dark, squinting into daylight. They looked beautiful, harmless as dazed babies.
I had interviewed for a job selling oriental rugs. The air conditioners of our city thrust the grid into sudden blackout. I drank behind the grocery with my brother, who worked there for beer money. One night I passed a guy sprawled shirtless on his lawn. He lifted his head to say, “We are the last of the free Americans.”
Because I believe all objects are infused with the divine, I took a job at a department store cosmetics counter. Some women knew what they wanted, but most looked shamed beneath the lamps, asking me which shades would make them prettier.
At night I shed the uniform, a squared-off lab coat. I scrubbed away lipstick and mascara over one of the double sinks. The water was the color of a dark, wet road, the raw face approximating one I recognized.