Worthless Buyer Poem by Irfan Habeeb A M K

A man stops at the signboard
of a brothel,
letters half-lit in tired neon.

He walks in,
pays half of what his hands had earned that week,
half of what the city took from him anyway,
and books a room.

A woman waits there,
beautiful, tired,
or maybe just steady.

...
They sit,
talk through the weight of the night..

He leans forward,
words spilling like judgment disguised as care:
aren't you ashamed?
don't you feel the ache
of selling your own body?

She breathes,
almost amused,
my body is worth at least this much,
don't you think?

He laughs bitter,
a thousand?
that's all you think?
don't you care what it means?

And then she cuts him open,
with a blade quiet as death.

'my body worth a thousand,
yours:
minus a thousand'