Break Room

this day we mark, not so
different from all the
rest, yet it has candles, and
cake, and plastic goblets
of cheap champagne so harsh
it burns the throat, the
cake a slab of flour, butter,
sugar, eggs overlaid with
thickwhite cream graced with
fragile roses crushed by a
spork (no forks being
available) in the dim dark
of the break room, the
sad coffee-colored carpet
fraying under our feet and
she lifts her glass, yes, before
returning to struggle with the
copier, thrusting her hands
deep into the warmth of
the machinery to retrieve the
paper folded, fanlike, between
the rollers