Wednesday, March 20, 2019

day SEVEN HUNDRED and NINETY


Put the Baby in the Filing Cabinet

Take an extended lunch,
put the baby in the filing cabinet
her colleagues hid their fear
she wouldn’t return.

The jokes wore thin
as they pretended
to put her expressed
milk in their tea.

She works by desk lamp
as the overhead lights remind
her that her privacy was overridden
by strip lights and strangers.

Her work-flow ebbed
around childcare,
annual leave consumed
by childhood illnesses.

Treating herself to a tea break,
she looks at the filing
cabinet drawer
wonders, if she climbed in,

would they pack her off
with the dead files or leave
her document walleted
in a suspension folder?


--Emma Lee

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