Triggered

Glass partitions, laminate flooring: the Jobcentre plays at being a corporate space.  A man jokes with the security guard. ‘At least the bookies serve coffee,’ he says.  He winks at me, a tiny blond woman, but I know it’s sex not solidarity.

‘Why don’t they help themselves?’ I hear my dead mother say.  Never worked a day in thirty years of marriage.

I imagine exploding screens, carpet burning like toast, bomb a slicing wind punching off clothes and flesh.  ‘There is nothing more dangerous than a clever person deprived of purpose,’ I think; but I am lying.  

I will not bomb this place.  I will not bring it all crashing down any more than I told my dead mother where my Dad’s well-manicured hands went.

“Always best to defuse tensions,” my mother would say.

The man behind the desk is younger than me, forehead detailed by tiny pimples.

“We have to sanction your benefits.”

“But I was at an interview,” I say.  I cannot hear for whooshing in my ears.

“You can appeal, “ she says.

“But I need money now.”

I stand, too much to hold in.  He looks afraid.  

Once I begin bellowing I cannot stop.