You work in an office

You work in an office

When I don't want to see you, I open my eyes.

I know who you are, I get you, I understand you. You are convalescing, you are ailing life. You know, you sleep at night, dream with cars and naked women. You don’t live love, all choked up on rumors and paperwork. You don’t trace paths because you don’t have patience, you don’t have friends, only passing acquaintances. You do not know how to speak, but you know how to keep quiet.

I saw you. You were crossing the street and you thought you were the owner of your shoes, and thought that by stepping harshly on the floor, you were stepping harshly on the world and on what you think about your own self. But you are still mute. You are like a silent flute or a soundless thunder. Like an old armchair, plagued by memories, softened by longing, burdened by dust and sacrifices that you are not sure to have made. And the worse of all is that you have already started to feel jealousy. You see other faces and see your own, see other pockets and moan, crawling back into your cocoon, even though you hate caterpillars, feeling like a weirdo, like a loner.

You are a wandering vagrant, born in the twentieth century, but who should have died before, even though you are not alive, even though you really hate life, and I know you, you are I, we are all. A gray tune, a nickname, a fickle path, a hunchback. You live every day to wake up, just to be afraid to go back to bed, just to be unable to get out of bed because you are afraid of facing tomorrow, and blame all your sorrows, every start of the week, to the troubling fact that the weekend just slipped again through your hands. I know you all too well, you work in an office.

You dress a rented suit, fitted perfectly for your routine, and looking sharp, you are convinced that you are climbing ranks, tearing down walls, discovering truths, but then, you submerge yourself in the horrible cold sloth of death, and you are hardly the shadow of who you were, not even a whisper of who you used to be, when you spoke to me, when you were you and me, small and free, in your own way.

Mon frère, if you were born king, why are you a slave? Why do you live without living, caged by four hollow walls, mimicking the carpet, expendable like a doll? The eternal wind that blew your sails, the skyline that you dreamt so close, the wonder of living full of joy…what have you done to them? Where have they gone? Why did you forget about me? What did you become? I know you all too well, you eyesore of fright, you greasy, sallow, passivity of life, just a digit-dialing couch adorned with fancy shirts. Would you even talk back to me? Do you even have any breath left, behind your office throne that you guard with so much regret? With your teeth and your nails, afraid of losing what you don’t really want, because all you have left is the desire to hold on. Even if you are sad, you would swallow yourself as you are, rather than eat from what you were, you said you will come back, but I wonder, do you even know where?