I worked in a suburban office compound building replete with floors and elevators and front deskmen and cube farms and conference rooms and soullessness and on our floor there was a bathroom and in that bathroom there were stalls and in one of those stalls was a chipped floor tile.

Sometimes, sitting at my desk in a state of pseudo-professional catatonia, I would imagine myself disappearing for a spell to sneak in there when no one was around and crouch down to chip away at that tile with a small, blunt object the way I felt that job chipped away at my life.

In my idle fantasy I’d come back day after day and, Shawshank-style, I’d eventually make my escape through the building’s shit-choked innards in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm that would cover the sounds of my flight.

But there’s nothing on the other side, I’d say to myself, only the ceiling of the bathroom on the floor below, and then the image would turn to that of another man in another stall directly beneath me chipping in precisely the same manner, both of us going nowhere.

That was then, and now I’m present, not trying to get anywhere, not even to tomorrow. Just a vessel floating through, occasionally remembering the nowheres I’ve been.