How to Stay

Somewhere between the water cooler and the conference room, she realized her life had slowly and undetectably become a labyrinth of hallways. There was nowhere to sit. 

It hadn’t always been this way. She used to remove her watch for lunch; used to let Sunday mornings wander aimlessly through her apartment; used to have time to read books she didn’t like. Now, she spent so much time going someplace, that being anywhere had become a myth, an act so defined by the scent of the future and the crumbs of the past, it had ceased to exist. 

So she huffed along, pulled by the promise of a destination, but having forgotten what arriving really felt like. Had she stumbled onto the very doors of paradise, she wouldn’t have known how to stay. 

She looked down at her phone. She was late.