Not working

The vast expanse of desk
is a desert I cannot cross,
cluttered as it always is with phone and screen,
keyboard, mousemat,
papers of rapidly decreasing relevance
and an assortment of fragile pens.

Not to mention management expectations,
meaningless meetings,
a babble of voices
and the growing sense that something,
some sense somewhere,
might have been lost.

What I wouldn’t give
for a crowd of locusts
to decimate my working life,
send me back to the cool womb of anticipation,
the moment of stepping over the office threshold
all those years ago,

to find,
if she can be found at all,
the woman I used to be.