Poem: At the End of the Fiscal Year by Curtis LeBlanc

Illustration by Ricky Castanedo  | Instagram: @outer.darkness

There were desks and desks for me
to put the crowbar through, just so no one
else could possibly have a use for them.
Beside the green garbage bin in the loading bay
of the business supplies department store, I destroyed
the smooth surfaces that mocked maple
and mahogany, oak and pine, until they
showed themselves for who they really were,
wood chips and sawdust pressed into
the semblance of a solid sheet, the real thing.
I was a quiet kind of afraid, paid to break
apart the useless shit that surrounded me. 
I tapped my wisdom teeth together, still seething
just below my gums, along to the beat
of an imaginary drum like I was watching
my favourite band play live for the first time
in the basement of a church or the backroom
of a place I was still too young to be in.
I killed time with kids who dumpster dived
at the bankrupt Burger King across the street,
crawled through the colourful plastic tubes
of the dismantled playroom. We bought
fluorescent light bulbs just to smash them
on each other’s backs. White powdered ghosts
haunted our black cotton crew neck sweaters. 
And all I ever really wanted was to feel
at peace in the company of others.
Had you told me it could be years, that for some
that calm may never come, I might have never left
the loading bay, satisfied to destroy
the write-offs that my weekend supervisor
placed, like a gift, in front of me.