a day

It is Friday. We are on a deadline and today has been fraught with frantic breaths and deep sighs. Sweaty fingertips tip-tip-tapping on keyboards as we work and rush and swiftly burn through our creativity.

I am writing an article about something important. On a safety issue for the magazine, but with every word I type the deadline draws nearer.

How have you fallen so far behind? she asks me.

We are not behind, I say. We will catch up.

She understands, because she is behind too.

We work until the transformer blows in our building. And the building next door. We have no internet and no email. The printers and the phones are all dead. The article and designs have all stopped.

We should be going to print soon, but my article is unfinished. It is a very important piece, I remind her.

The sun shifts and angle of light flooding my office window strengthens then fades.

Then I read stories of Connecticut. Of shootings and children and tears. And the deadline, the work and the article seems suddenly so utterly unimportant.