so now it’s ten
fifty-five PM
and I sit here
alone
with my computer
slowly edging out
everything that I
couldn’t say as those
shells of people
walked my halls

in truth,
I hate them all

I hate their laugh
I hate their smiles
I hate their “hello, how are you!”s
I hate their greedy faces as they eat my food
I hate their moving bodies
I hate their requests for more, more, more! when I’d already given them
everything

I hate it all

half way through
I sat upstairs pulling a nasty splinter
out of the hard ball of my left foot
and when I finally got it out
and I retracted my leg from its twisted pretzel shape
I felt a million tiny pains
shoot up from that leg
and then back into my
brain

I didn’t yell but I wanted
to

and I know that if they had been
there
watching me pull that tiny wooden sliver
out of my foot
and then spreading my leg out
and feeling all that pain
they would’ve laughed
laughed
and
laughed
and
laughed

and I wouldn’t
have

later on
I will play pranks
shoot back jokes
enjoy myself
just as they had
done
and all I will get is ***** looks,
angry grimaces, threats on my
life in the billions

and I will feign surprise

I don’t what it is
but I’m always
the bad guy

call me a ****
call me a ****** bag
call me a ****-******* jacked-up *******

but the moment,
the moment,
I return any of that
(no matter how truthful)
I become all that worse
every
single
time

and as the night ends
and their numbers slowly
dwindle away

I watch the door swing close
just as quickly as it had swung
open and I
smile
smiling is all I can
do