two minutes

I tug at a string of white metal beads and the sluggish gray afternoon light comes into my corner office, like a visitor waiting outside the front door, who was told, casually, that the boss will see him now. The vertical blinds had swept to one side and let me view the grills visitors sometimes step on, on their way around the museum, and down into the basement where my corner is tucked away safely. I am like those Russian keepsakes, those porcelain or clay vases that twist open to reveal another replica, which in turn twists open, showing a deeper layer, and in that, another, and another, and one more. I see through my window, past the metal grill, banana leaves and plants torn by winds, and past that, an old electric post, the wooden kind; a tree that used to stand firm and brown and proud in a forest in a secluded elsewhere, but now has to just stand still, braced by metal and weighed down by appended wires, catatonic and looking down on a gray parking lot, and up at a sky that does nothing but rain. A "ting!" from behind me. My coffee has now been reheated. I tug at the beads and the blinds slide to cover my ivory basement view, leaving me again in the soft gold circular hum of my desklamp and the swirling scent of recycled coffee. The keyboard, and my boss, becons. I sit and sip and slide words on the keys.