Each morning broke a mirror of the last:
The alarm, the silk knot tightening at my throat.
I moved as if what lived in me had passed—
A ghost entombed in code the systems wrote.

My cubicle intoned its electric prayer,
The spreadsheets multiplied like cells gone wrong.
I breathed what the building recycled as air—
Another cell dividing to belong.

At noon I chewed but could not taste the bread,
At one, I fed my body to the shrine.
We bent like candles, waiting to be dead,
Our small flames tilting toward a single line.

At night the television preached its creed,
Bright phantoms selling salves for my malaise.
I bought the salve. I let it name my need.
The ache replied with gratitude, yet stays.

They found me barefoot, dancing on the desk,
My mouth a hymn that made the fluorescent flicker.
They called it breakdown, watched me turn grotesque—
I called it mercy. I should have broken quicker.