The Safety Gave You Nothing

Polish the shoes.

Wipe the dust from paper weight

a degree framed in fading gold.

Smile, charming but hollow.

Speak the script.

Shake the hand

not too firm.

Contain the flood.

Swallow the want.

Hide the fire.

Years bartered

for a chair and a calendar.

The road hums,

back and forth,

like penance.

You drive,

not to arrive,

but to prove

you deserve to.

A step, a rung,

or just the hope

not to slip beneath.

Tiny indulgences

sugar, caffeine,

scroll, smoke

wear thin.

The coffee turns bitter.

The meetings blur,

voiceless and gray.

You retreat nightly

to your rented rectangle,

where silence waits.

Regret dressed in blue light.

The echo of a sentence

you should or should not have sent.

Week's end:

Your chosen soma,

your plunge into forgetting.

Try again Monday.

Try to remember

why this matters.

Retirement:

a soft myth on the horizon

a reward for the obedient.

A chance, maybe,

to live after the part where it counted.

But now,

the degree is shelved.

The tools

relics of a ritual

boxed.

Farewells to the avatars

you called colleagues.

This is the last commute.

No more glass doors.

No more lanyards, no more codes.

Freedom glints at the edge,

not golden, but raw

like skin no longer calloused

from pretending.

You count what's gone:

time.

truth.

the self you buried

under deadlines and praise.

You made the rich man richer.

You gave your ego a nameplate.

You stayed where so many stood still.

And what did the safety buy you?

Nothing

but a slower death.