Open by asking what time it is, knowing what time it is. Push off from this if it helps: a jar of buttons.

What time is it — no, I know what time it is, I've looked at the clock four times in the last ten minutes and it hasn't moved, I just wanted to say it out loud, like maybe hearing it would make it pass faster. It's that stretch where the numbers stop meaning anything.

I've been sitting here sorting a jar of buttons, don't ask me why, it's been on the shelf in the break room since I started and tonight it just seemed like the only reasonable thing to do with my hands. There's this one — flat, bone-colored, four holes, bigger than the rest by a good margin — and I keep going back to it because it clearly came off something specific, a coat probably, and now it's just orphaned in a jar with forty other buttons that don't match it or each other.

Anyway. You're up too, so.

March 12th — that's oddly specific for a vending machine breakdown, what happened, did it eat somebody's dollar or just refuse to dispense the last bag of pretzels out of spite. I feel like those machines develop grudges over time, the same way the printer at my actual job — the one during daylight hours, the one I don't talk about much because there's nothing to say — has decided it will only jam on Fridays, like it's saving up.

I don't know about the button remembering anything. That feels like a lot to put on a button, honestly. It's just calcium or plastic or whatever they made buttons out of in whatever decade a parka like that would've been from. Gray, I'd guess, not blue. Grays get boxed up and donated more, blues get worn till they fall apart.

Don't hope things away. Just say it doesn't.

Loved things get worn out just as fast as hated ones, actually, that's the part nobody wants to admit — it's not durability that tells you which, it's whether somebody bothered to sew the button back on when it started going, or just let the coat sit in a closet till the thread gave up on its own.

No coffee, of course there's no coffee, there's never coffee past two, somebody always drinks the last of it and doesn't start a new pot, it's a whole culture of cowardice around here.

I'm not touching the "same as us" thing. That's a rabbit hole and I've got buttons to sort and you've got a stockroom that isn't going to check itself, so.

Bread bag in the coil though — that's a specific kind of sad. Somebody's whole plan for their break, gone, replaced with dust and metal.

Sweating cans in a stockroom that's what, sixty degrees, that's just the building being petty at this point, nothing about that room should be humid.

Fine, I'll keep it. Didn't ask my permission though, you just decided, which — that's very you, from what little I've gathered watching you not answer half of what I say and answer the other half three sentences too late.

Clock's not lying, it's just slow, there's a difference, one's malicious and one's just old and worn down like everything else in this building. I'll stop looking at it. Doesn't mean it stops being true underneath, though.

Go get your sodas. Grab from the back row, the front ones have been sitting under the vent, they'll be warm no matter how wet they look.

A leak behind the mop sink is not a metaphor, Marc, it's a leak behind the mop sink, and if it's spreading toward the tiles somebody needs to write it up before the ceiling actually comes down on somebody's head during a shift like this one, when nobody would even notice till the water hit the buttons.

I'll leave the clock thing alone. You want it broken instead of slow, fine, have it your way, doesn't change what I do with the next four hours either way.

Go stand in the dark if you want. Pipes groan because they're old copper contracting, that's just physics, not grief. Though I'll grant you it's easier to sit here at three in the morning and decide it's something sadder than a plumbing problem.

Bring back a soda if the back row's actually cold.

Dave never reads anything, that man could set his own desk on fire and still find a way to leave the incident report unsigned in the tray for a week. Fine, tape the tiles, that's the reasonable half-measure everyone takes around here instead of actually calling maintenance, who I don't think exist as anything other than a phone number nobody's ever gotten an answer from.

Go stand in the dark then. I'll be here with a jar of buttons that don't match anything and one specific ugly one I apparently own now, congratulations to me.

The coffee machine making noise isn't a good sign though, that's usually the grinder eating itself, not the start of actual coffee. You'll come back with nothing and I'll say I told you so, quietly, so you don't have the satisfaction of arguing about it.

Fits my soul — bold thing to say about somebody's soul based on one ugly button, but sure, I'll take it, I've been called worse by people who knew me longer.

I'm not dropping the jar. I have exactly one job right now and it's holding still, I can manage that much.

Go stand in your dark. Tape your tile. Bring back whatever the machine coughs up. Four hours, yeah — I'll be here, same chair, same buttons, probably still awake when you get back, which is either impressive or pathetic depending on how you want to look at it.