History on 55

One hundred red and white
take-a-number cards
dangle on the wall
of the blood test lab,

on the border between
receptionist and technician
who argue jurisdiction
in front of the patients.

A record of my hand is
folded into hundreds of other hands
on number fifty-five
across the gloss of the plastic,

elongating highlights, waxy smears,
etched in melt marks,
and pull patterns around the hole
where we lift the card from its hook.

If the marks of my hands
could be teased
out from the others,
I could be remembered this way.