isn’t like departmental budgeting

at all.

No amount of funding pie-chart

will turn the lights back on

if you don’t have the five-digit password

to the email account

where the bills are. There is very little

put aside for guns. Coffee

cannot be bought in bulk, in barrel

drums like bombs,

without a business number or official

credit card. When someone dies

everything in their name

stops.

Per capita per annums readjust but

they don’t tell you where

the rent money came from, or even

how much it was. Not the wi-fi

or Netflix passwords, not the code

for the safe. Nothing

can re-fill the quota, the profitability,

the efficiency matrix—

the space in the garage, the cup

of tea gone cold on the counter, the heart

half empty.