After Hours

The printer started in the empty office,

papers emerging into fluorescent light

like a small mechanical birth

nobody needed.

The sound—

that mechanical whir and click—

was the only other thing alive

besides me, staying late again,

the only one who doesn't leave

when the day is supposed to be done.

I watched the papers stack

and realized I'm the kind of person

who stays, who listens to printers

in empty rooms, who accepts

the loneliness as part of the job,

who will probably die at this desk

with the fluorescent lights humming

and the printer still spitting out

whatever it was told to.