Last night I dreamed that I was
at work. At work today I dreamed
that I could dream. I could taste it.
It was better than clocking out.
I like that time stretches & warps in dreams
-- even the worst ones. It’s like stealing
time from god, taking yourself back
from your body all night.
The site of all work is the body. The site of all
this being thieved from myself again
& again, this place I am made a
passenger. I used to think
disassociating was indescribable.
But then I realized that it’s just work.
Brendan Joyce is a busboy in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the author of Character Limit (2019), a collection of poetry originally published as a twitter thread. He can be found on Twitter at @nicetryofficer.