Wednesdays I always wore a suit – nothing flashy but a good solid business style get-up. Some of the guys around here wore suits everyday and to me this was my one concession to the way people’s expectations might spiral out of control if I dressed sharp all the time, in that I need people to see me as a serious peer but also need them to be aware that I wasn’t going to let this place turn me into something I wasn’t. All of which was asking a lot, I suppose, from the simple act of wearing a suit.
Purvis came over to my desk and leaned down and that was it. I have low tolerance for those kind of placating gestures. I almost punched him right then because I knew that everything was dying, and that there’s no way we can really trust all the data that gets jammed into our heads, and that it’s such a beautiful world we live in but so tragic too. So what bothered me, because maybe I was seeing it for the first time or because maybe it was happening for the first time, is that one wall of the office started to fall in, to crumble away, & I decided this would be my last heroic act before going to lunch with Purvis.
I placed one hand on it to hold it up & when the other walls started to fall, I tried to hold them in place too. I noticed outside the window that whole buildings were sort of swaying or bending and I knew I was going to have to grow larger if I was going to save my this whole doomed city from destruction. I knew, also, that if that happened, I would rip my suit.
Nate Pritts is the author of four books of poems, most recently THE WONDERFULL YEARE (Cooper Dillon) & BIG BRIGHT SUN (BlazeVOX). His fifth book, SWEET NOTHING, is forthcoming this fall from Lowbrow Press. He is the founder and principal editor of H_NGM_N. Find him online at http://www.natepritts.com.
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