The man who works in Human Resources
wears shirts buttoned tightly to the neck.

At our administrative meetings he spends twenty minutes reviewing the Dress Code.

He lurks daily outside our office, waiting for the elevator.
HR is on the 6th floor: what’s he doing on ours?

The man from HR has the face of a clean-shaven ferret.

In grade school he was called tattletale.
No one liked him then, either.

In bookstores he fights the urge to read over people’s shoulders.

He spends most nights alone at the kitchen window.
He lives on a quiet street.
His butter knives are lined up neatly in a drawer.
Sometimes he counts them.
There are exactly 24.
There were 25 when he bought them, and he frets about the one
gone missing.