The glaring sky

Winter encumbers us, makes the average and mundane difficult and unlikable. Coats and boots hold us down and back. The sky is a bad mood and drips its disgruntlingness down where we can't avoid it. April Winter is spiteful, like a co-worker no one ever really liked who doesn't want you enjoying yourself. It's Dwight, just proving a point.

I look like a little Eastern European girl at the feet, white stockings with cross-strapped black shoes.

The man who has an office but won't close his door is on the phone, letting me hear his whole end of the conversation, fake hacking for the entertainment of the other conversant. I take words and throw them into new places, verbal yoga. Bend this way now!

So are we having any fun yet? he yells. Yesterday he tried to foist his university umbrella on someone who kept insisting she had one already. Your parapluie cannot be as good as mine, the unspoken. I have a brick,someone just told him. Don't make her mad,says the assistant. She knows. She knows who wants to do what with the brick.