I am a sheet of paper.

A standard 80g A4 copy paper, produced at a paper mill in Pennsylvania.

I had pristine white skin and sharp edges.

The first half of my life was unremarkable. Along with thousands of my brothers and sisters, I lay pressed inside a blue wrapper, sitting on a dark warehouse shelf.

Until yesterday, when an order from the Pittsburgh City Government’s procurement office changed my fate.

A truck took us to Grant Street.

We were carried into that magnificent stone building and through its marble corridors.

Eventually, I was delivered to an office.

It was busy here.

A pair of hands tore open the wrapping paper.

Light pierced through, and I saw daylight again.

The hands were slender, but their movements were nimble and strong.

Her fingers had thin calluses from long hours of typing.

I overheard others call her Sarah Jenkins.

She grabbed me and my brothers, loading us neatly into the feed tray of a massive high-speed laser printer.

The machine rumbled to life. The rollers spun, and a force pulled me inside.

A wave of heat washed over me.

A laser scanned across my surface. Toner melted in the intense heat, seeping into my very fibers.

I felt a weight.

The weight of words.

When I slid out of the output tray and was restacked with the others, I was no longer a blank sheet.

A bold, black title was printed at the top of my page: *Pittsburgh City Public Infrastructure Hazard Notification Form*

Below it were dense grids of boxes: Location, Description of Damage, Eyewitness, Photo Attachment...

Sarah stood by the printer, looking at the mountain of pages we had become.

"Five thousand copies," she said to the person beside her. "And this is just the first batch."

The door was pushed open.

A burly man walked in.

I heard Sarah call him Frank.

"All here?" Frank asked.

"All here." Sarah pointed to the stack I was in. "Tell the brothers in the Union that these are our bullets. Every single one needs to be filled out, every one needs a photo, and every one needs to be factual."

Frank reached out with a huge, rough hand and snatched me up.

His grip was so strong it wrinkled my edges.

"Don’t worry," Frank said. "We’re going to turn this city upside down."

I was packed into a cardboard box and tossed onto the back seat of a pickup truck.

Jolting.

Violent jolting.

The truck left the smooth roads of downtown and headed for the Hill District.

Sometime later, the truck stopped.

The cardboard box was opened.

I was handed to a young Black man.

He wore a vest with a Union logo, and there was a sharp intelligence in his eyes.

He carried me through narrow, dilapidated streets and past graffiti-covered walls.

He stopped in front of an old, red-brick apartment building and knocked on a wooden door with peeling paint.

The door opened.

A man in his thirties answered the door. He was wearing a faded T-shirt and holding a fork, clearly in the middle of a meal.

"Hello, I’m a community volunteer." The young man handed him the printed sheet—me. "We’re collecting reports on things like unrepaired potholes and broken streetlights in the neighborhood. If you’ve seen any, please fill this out."

The man took me skeptically.

His greasy fingers smudged my corner.

"Is this going to do any good?" the man asked. "I’ve called the Mayor’s hotline a hundred times about this."

"This time is different," the young man said. "This is a task that came directly from Mayor Leo."

The man looked at me, didn’t say a word, and turned back inside.

He tossed me onto the dining table, next to a half-eaten plate of pasta and a bottle of beer.

The air in the room was hot and stuffy. A football game was on TV.

"Who was that?"

A woman’s voice came from the kitchen.

"Someone from the new Mayor," the man said, sitting back down and stuffing a forkful of pasta into his mouth. "Gave me some stupid piece of paper, said it’s for some repair request form."

The woman walked out, wiping her hands. She picked me up, glanced at me, then tossed me back on the table.

"Hmph. Leo Wallace." The woman scoffed. "He’s been in office for a month now. Has anything changed around here? The trash on the corner is still piling up, and the streetlights are still out. I’m telling you, he’s no different from the last one, Carter Wright. They’re all liars."

"You can’t say that," the man said, his voice muffled as he chewed his pasta. "He’s brand new. You’ve got to give him some time."

"Give him time?" The woman’s voice rose. "How much time have we given them? Your worker’s comp claim has been stalled for two years! The last time you went to city hall, what did that clerk tell you? To go home and wait!"

"Just drop it," the man said, irritated.

"I won’t drop it!" The woman slammed the rag down on the table. "You even voted for him, went and volunteered for him. And what now? He’s sitting in his big office with the air conditioning on, and he’s completely forgotten all about you. All you do is daydream about this pointless stuff, hoping those bureaucrats will suddenly grow a conscience? You’re dreaming!"

"Shut up!"

The man slammed his fork down on the plate, making a sharp, grating sound.

He stood up, his chest heaving violently.

He looked at his ranting wife, at their cramped, run-down home, and at the sheet of paper on the table with its black grid.

A nameless rage burned in his chest.

Anger at his wife, anger at his life, and anger at his own powerlessness.