The Thirtieth Day

Salary is a season, not a harvest —

it arrives, it is spent,

and then the waiting begins again.

By the twentieth, the pocket is a rumor.

By the twenty-fifth, faith is the only currency

that has not yet been devalued.

On the thirtieth, the phone rings differently.

Even its silence sounds like arithmetic —

rent, light bill, school fee, the debt

owed to a cousin who did not ask twice.

Still, we set the table.

Still, we say grace like it is not

also a kind of budgeting.