Roofs

Even on our Friday shifts (which ends in Saturday morning), there's no such thing as winding-down in the office. It's the end of the week and I'm toxic, catching-up and already busy the following week.

We are busy with designing and tweaking our processes so that we can further dehumanize ourselves and make us function like input/output machines. We call it efficiency. We brandish it as optimization.

It must have been 5am and I haven't had my "lunch." I walk to the parking lot and get the lunch box I left in the car. Crab sticks in spicy mayo on wheat bread - the high point of my shift.

Everytime I go out to the parking lot at 5am, the very humid summer air refreshes my lungs and the openness of the sky imposes itself on you. In the next hour or two, the sky will become monochromatic. It will patiently, monochromatically infuse itself with the glaring colors of sunrise.

How I wish I could run, fill my lungs with this beautiful morning air and watch the sky's spectacular transformation.

Dismantling my hesitation, I go back inside the office. I eat my sandwich while working in my station, my very own veal-flattening pen. I look up to the ceiling, remember the beautiful sky outside, my legs aching to run, and my suppressed imagination slashing the ceiling and telling the roof, "Roof, you are an awful waste of sky."