Steamed

I work in an environmental lab. My job is to test drinking and waste water for bacteria. When my tests are finished, I have to sterilize everything in a steam autoclave, hence the title and the idea.


Later,
when you see my shadow
--that mist-born apparition of me--
standing
where you see me standing now
crayoned,
by your memory
in ragged-blue jeans
tangle-brown hair
the creamness of my skin
screaming
from the holes in my T-shirt


Spare me a thought


before I am whisked up
--a sterilized cloud
of steamed dust--
to bond with the ceiling
and the rusty stains
of all the others
who've stood here before.