I have eleven cents in Boston, and that's all the reparation the east coast will ever pay me. It gains interest in the virtual vault of some large grey system of computers, using just as much memory as the accounts of people with hundreds and thousands saved. It costs more than eleven cents to maintain my share of the computers, more than eleven cents to send me my monthly statement with us postage affixed to the envelope. But I will not be the one to yield.
I will not get eleven cents from the school that crushed my heart for a year. I will not get eleven cents from the skinny blonds in their hundred dollar khakis. I will not get eleven cents from the boy I went to bed with at Johns Hopkins, or the one at Amherst, or the one at Columbia. I will not get eleven cents from the ex-boyfriend who was arrested on Valentine's Day. I will not get eleven cents from the trust fund babies at the Tuesday night goth club. I will not get eleven cents from the tired and arrogant singer of Third Eye Blind. I will not get eleven cents from the people who built the seemingly haunted dorm, or from the fruit store that sold cigarettes and smelled like rotting plums, or from the sweet lesbian whose homework I did. I will not get eleven cents of the scholarship I lost.
Bankboston, formerly Bay Bank, now something else, pays the east coast's penance for all my bitterness. I won't tell anyone I have eleven cents, and when I die, increasingly expensive bank statements will continue to be delivered, month after month, to the dead letters department. I will not write a letter and pay the postage, just to tell them to send me a check for eleven cents. |
