The shift that never ends

I clock in to a glow that never dims,
three laptops humming in my home office.
One name on every login,
all-digital work braided through my wrists,
and the hours multiply like tabs in the dark.

Coffee is a bandage that doesn’t stick.
Sleep is a rumor I can’t prove.
Even my breath works overtime,
lugging its little suitcase up the stairs of my chest.

Some days I want to run,
to sprint until the world blurs into wind,
but my legs are poured concrete,
a sidewalk I’m nailed to
while life rushes by in shoes I can’t afford.

So I lie down inside the hum of fluorescent noon,
folding myself like a tired map.
I make a small harbour out of stillness,
a quiet, unlit room where I can wait.

I wait for a hand that knows where the light switch is,
for a voice that sounds like clean water,
for someone to lift me from the cooled metal of the day
and teach my lungs to open like windows again.

I wait to be gathered like spilled rice,
stitched back into the shirt of my own body,
to feel colour return to my knuckles,
spark jump the broken fuse.

Until then, I am the pause between machines,
the soft, stubborn part of midnight
that refuses to end.

If you find me
dust on my sleeves, hours in my hair
take me gently by the name I forgot,
pull me toward morning,
and tell my heart it can clock out.
Tell it to live again.