“It Takes All Kinds”

I see it every time I walk up to those glass doors — I look in your office, hoping for just one more clue on how to live, how to wrest my life out of the biting grasp of candy bar dietetics, of turning down the thermostat in winter, of living a second class existence. Sometimes I see your cat rolling around on the rug in there. Then I’ll see you, emerging out of your corner cubicle. Your skin will look just like mine. I’ll swear I’ll see a mirror there. I see in you nervousness, almost like you’re coated in some lizard sweat, all the obligatory things you’ve been doing, “fun” things, with a false enthusiasm, always that nervous smile. Sometimes I wonder if you’d rather change places with me, and have your life be composed of endless shouting matches, of nobody saying hi to you, of your every moment being consumed with the thought of how you’re going to make your next rent payment. It’s something in your eyes. You’re happy, but you’re never TRULY happy, happiness is part of your job. You thumb your nose at the unmitigated bile — unthinkable forms of our species crouched in dusty corners for what seems like eternity, wanting only the demise of everyone who passes, wanting only annihilation of this entire form — the houses, the computers, the passing of time, everything that has placed them in this miserable condition of “honest worker.” And time passes upon your vacation in Cancun — upon the last one, and the next one. Time works on those like sands from a star, masking their autonomy, crashing into them like a tidal wave from California. Movies work on time, you watch, from the Hollywood machine, how you took that gun out, didn’t you, how you finally got your way, didn’t you.