Time, lately,
has lost the decency to behave like time—
it no longer marches, but lounges,
sprawled indecorously across the afternoon.
I wake without the ceremony of alarm,
no summons from obligation’s thin brass bell,
only the soft, unambitious light
idling at the edge of the blinds.
Coffee becomes less a necessity
than a recurring philosophical position—
I brew it not to awaken
but to justify the morning.
There are, I’ve discovered,
only so many ways to sit in a chair
before it becomes a study in diminishing returns.
I rotate postures like minor governments,
none particularly stable.
The inbox, once a theater of minor urgencies,
now performs a minimalist piece:
one newsletter, two promotions,
and silence so complete it feels curated.
I begin projects with a scholar’s optimism—
lists are drafted, ambitions footnoted—
then abandon them with equal rigor,
citing fatigue, or weather, or the vague
yet persuasive argument of later.
Lunch arrives as both event and solution.
I eat with a seriousness usually reserved
for decisions of state,
having little else that demands
such structured attention.
Afternoons dilate.
I consider learning a language,
reorganizing my life,
becoming, in some modest sense, better—
instead I watch a dust mote
navigate a shaft of light
with admirable consistency.
Evening restores a kind of dignity:
others return from their occupations,
bearing the mild exhaustion of the employed.
I mimic it, subtly—
a yawn here, a stretch there—
as though I too have been spent usefully.
I am not undone,
only recalibrated—
a man briefly removed from the machinery,
listening to its absence hum.
It is not tragedy, this quiet,
nor is it freedom in any heroic sense—
just the long, measured interval
between what was required
and what will be again.