The Pyramid of Empty Days

The cat watches me from the windowsill, yellow eyes tracking my movement like a security camera I can't disable. I haven't named him. Names create attachment, and I've learned that attachment is just another form of loss.

I work in data entry for a company that sells nutritional supplements to people who will probably never take them. My cubicle sits on the forty-second floor of the corporate pyramid—a glass and steel monument to human ambition that feels less like achievement and more like containment. From up here, the people on the sidewalk look like scattered ants, meaningless and indistinguishable.

"You look like shit, Marcia," says Carl from the next cubicle. Carl has enthusiasm for meetings that borders on pathological. He's the kind of person who says "let's circle back" without irony.

"I'm fine," I say, because the truth would require more intimacy than I can afford at 9:47 AM on a Tuesday.

The truth is that I've been feeling like a zombie for six months. Not the cinematic kind—no hunger for brains, no shambling walk. Just the slow erosion of everything that once made me feel alive. I move through my apartment, my job, my relationships like a ghost haunting my own life. I make coffee. I answer emails. I nod at appropriate moments in conversations. The machinery of personhood operates without a operator.

Last night, I found myself standing in front of the mirror for twenty minutes, trying to remember the last time I felt something that wasn't exhaustion or vague anxiety. My mother called while I was staring at my reflection, and I let it go to voicemail. I'll call her back tomorrow. Tomorrow has become my favorite word—it contains all the things I'll definitely do eventually.

The cat jumps down from the windowsill and head-butts my shin. I crouch to scratch behind his ears, and for a moment, the simple warmth of another living thing pierces the fog. He purrs like a small engine, completely unaware that he's the only real thing in my apartment.

"At least one of us knows how to live," I tell him.

He closes his eyes and leans into my hand. Some days, that's enough.

I stand up, grab my briefcase, and head toward the elevator. The corporate pyramid awaits. Somewhere between the forty-second floor and the ground, I'll probably remember what I'm supposed to be doing here. Tomorrow, definitely.