Your day job

[tonywalt]

Not the building itself —
glass that caught the sun like a warning,
the elevator with its quiet hum of resignation,
the way the carpet swallowed your steps.

Not the thin blue light of spreadsheets,
not the emails that flickered in
like mayflies and just as quickly gone,
not the polished language
of reports written for no one.

You leave the other things:
your name on a lanyard,
your name in a system that will forget you
in two weeks.

The awkward nods in the hallway.
Lunches eaten in the car.
The plant on your desk—
half-alive, half-giving up.

And in that leaving,
something new:

you leave the building,
all that noise behind—
now it’s down to this:
can you write?