Office (March)

[Video nasty] Your Resolute desk is sinking below the waterline. Your silver-plated bronco buster is melting in the heat. Your framed dartboard of Nasty Woman has lost its point. Your George Washington’s dripping to the floor. Your oversized floral gold couches are floating toward the lawn. Your crimson telephone doesn’t ring anymore. Your starship console hasn’t lit up for weeks. Your Winston Churchill’s a head without a body, rolling down your tenpin bowling alley. Your appointments diary stalled last March. Your letter to Cuba was returned to sender. Your fountain pen has exploded. Your advisors are down in the bunker. 

Office (December)

December turns Kafkaesque. Our days are spent cataloguing the Offices. But this week, guiltless, we must fill out Working With Children Checks. The first trial is online. The form gets personal. We’ve no idea who’s asking the questions, or if answers stay private. Their site saves the testimony, but when we return our password cannot be read. We must go to the Post Office, where a stranger takes our photograph, in case we’re not who we are in our passport. Only it’s the wrong Post Office. Officials are kind but their job is Guilt. Everyone’s on trial for their secrets.