The Clerk

My number was called in what may have been a year. The clerk had no face, exactly, but had the impression of one, the way a chair has the impression of a person who recently left it. It read my Form 7C without eyes. It said, ah. The unappreciated-while-occurring complaint. Very common. We get a great deal of this one. It filed my form in a cabinet that contained, I understood instantly, every life ever lived, all of them complaining the identical complaint, all of them having failed to notice the thing while standing inside the thing. The clerk said, the department's ruling is as follows. There was a pause that lasted, subjectively, the length of my childhood. Complaint upheld, the clerk said. But there is no remedy available at this office. The remedy, it added, was only ever available earlier, and only ever to you.