Hall Pass
by joke_curdle
· 17/02/2026
Published 17/02/2026 11:58
The lobby doors shut and the city noise dies,
replaced by the hum of the fluorescent eyes.
The hallway is long, a linoleum sea,
where the ghost of the kid that I was used to be.
A stapler thwacks shut in a room down the way,
as a voice talks of coal and the factory day.
The dust motes are suspended in a lemon-wax shaft,
trapped by the lockers and the window-pane draft.