This is the beating heart of the system:
a grubby handled microwave,
servicing an office of middle aged women,
seated behind desks,
typing endlessly at outdated,
behind the times,
nearing obsolescent,
computers.
Prisoners behind mountains of endless papers,
each important,
but lost in anonymity,
hidden by years and dates.
Behind each desk,
individuality in the form of a special child's
special drawing,
or a meaningful calendar,
a reminder of a nearly forgotten holiday,
so very long ago,
a heart worn on a sleeve,
hidden,
obscured,
forgotten,
consumed
by the ever expanding mountain
of papers,
each of them important,
lost in the anonymity of
scale.
The printer barely works,
in its attempt to add
to the ever expanding mountain.
It shudders and it starts,
it too wants a voice,
but is drowned out by all the voices,
hidden by scale.
This is how it ends.
With a signature on one of those anonymous
sheets of paper,
printed by an obsolete computer,
typed up by a middle aged woman,
hidden by a desk,
covered in clutter,
obscuring any lasting sense of the
individual.
