“Front Desk, 9/11”

 

 

The catalogue lies open

to Chair 47B,

its diagram promising lumbar certainty

in a world that has just

crumbled in on itself.

 

The sales phone blinks red,

a small emergency

that no longer knows its scale.

Someone wants a quote

on bulk swivel units

while the television

in the break room

shows a skyline

rewriting its own grammar.

 

The mob ledger on the counter

still smells of toner and sweat,

columns of numbers

trying to impersonate order.

But every digit trembles now,

as if the ink remembers

that bodies are not inventory.

 

A dust‑fleck floats

through the fluorescent light,

slow as a thought

trying to decide

whether it still belongs

to the category “ordinary.”

 

The executive’s badge

reflects the screen —

a tiny mirrored tower

falling again and again

in the plastic sheen

of corporate identification.

 

Outside, a forklift beeps,

insisting on its ritual,

moving pallets of chairs

designed for the posture

of people who believed

tomorrow was a stable noun.

 

And in the pause

between two news anchors

searching for language

that no longer exists,

the front desk becomes

a threshold without a name —

a place where symbols

forget their jobs

and objects remember

they were never neutral.

 

And the switchboard’s fireworks

go blank.

 

 

 

 

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