The Policyholder and His Dependents
After everyone else in the house has gone
to bed, the wife, the child who cries,
he sits at the kitchen table, reading
the insurance company’s little handbook.
The great works of literature
consulted, found lacking, he looks
to the underwriters, the nameless
whose job it is to catalogue
the debasements of flesh and spirit,
compose the manuals on memento mori.
It isn’t solace he seeks but the plainness of
the bottom line. Every manner of loss is assigned
an amount payable: for breast prosthesis,
surgical brassieres and certain drugs
listed in the compendium, for failure
of a reattached limb and its removal
within one year, for colostomy supplies,
for wigs. With the hunched, owlish
concentration of someone doing taxes,
he studies the fine print, trying to tally
exactly what is owed.
