Eric Roller lives and works in Port Angeles, Washington. He enjoys teaching youth and wandering aimlessly on the Olympic Peninsula.
A Personal Memorandum of Misunderstanding
Today, a Wednesday,
I’m sitting in my office
with its rectangular window set
perpendicular to the world,
writing this poem of resignation
on company letterhead.
There have been other signs
of my surrender for weeks:
I forget to shave on Sunday nights;
I wear Hawaiian shirts on Mondays;
on Tuesdays, I sport hiking boots
with khakis, and
last Friday, a half-day, I wandered
off into the woods adjacent to work
and fed my lunch to the chipmunks.
This particular office job,
like the many in the past
I shouldn’t have accepted,
now tops my list of places
I look forward to leaving behind,
just nudging out that portable toilet
I once visited on a 110-degree day
in a solitary desert campground
in Southern Arizona.
It started off amiably enough
last February.
I admit, I was infatuated with the facilities,
especially the gym with the convenient
personal sanitation wipes—
and I was smitten by
the discussion of benefits,
the 10-personal days and matching
retirement plan.
And as I walked away from the interview,
knowing I had landed the job,
I secretly smiled with
the thought of possibly
making it 20 years
for the pension.
Today, though,
a Wednesday,
this job has worn
through the fabric of the months
to bare the bones of
my starved resolve.
This morning, a mouthpiece
called an emergency
meeting about mission statements
and guiding principles.
A memorandum of understanding
was laid gently on my office chair
like a leaf on a forest floor while
I was away from my desk, and
by mid-morning
there was a heated debate
on the post-traditional re-engagement
of our institutional engagement plan.
After lunch, a time I like
to spend fretting about the future,
I was asked by my boss with a serious face
to conduct a laser-like examination
of the overall
capacity of our tools.
I sit here in my office, now,
just before quitting time,
my door wide open while
I write these words
in jagged columns,
hoping to get caught
with my pen on paper
meant for official
business only.
My stomach and chest
are beginning to tighten
with the anticipation of what
I know I’m about to do:
Walk into my superior’s office,
the one in the corner with the view
and the family photos with frames that read
“Happiness” or “Fun Times,”
slowly remove my keys from
their lanyard, and then slide them
across the newly waxed conference table
and say, feigning sadness,
I am submitting this,
my personal memorandum
of misunderstanding.