In elementary school, we all took the placement test. My best friend

who built robots out of potatoes, was meant to be an engineer

and my enemy was meant to be a teacher of children

and another enemy a healer of animals. When

the results arrived in the mailbox, my parents sat

me down and told me I was being called

to the Ministry of Loneliness. They knew before I knew,

worried that I’d end up like my aunt, who suffocated

in a pile of metaphorical cats with no one

to attend her funeral. The data shows

that to be truly lonely is a sickness,

the equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes

a day. So I stand in front of the brick building

in my mind and smoke one beautiful cigarette after another.

When my break is over, I head back to the factory and take my place

at the conveyor belt of memories as each moment

with you steadily rolls by. When the painful ones approach,

I sort them into a bin where they will be burned. When my shift

ends, I’ll make the difficult walk to the incinerator and scoop

the ashes into a plastic bag that I’ll eventually scatter

into some unnamed body

of water.