What the Office Birds Do Not Know about Working Remotely

from a Different Timezone

By Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan

the sky is unusual / bereft of aliens / the dead wind /
heavily perfumed / with the gust of phantoms / a
diligent alarm clock / & a lingering work schedule /
living off my sleep / it scatters its length / across the
summertime / striking 2 am twice before dawn / here /
the night has ceased to be the bedchamber / I watch
it from the eyes of an owl / as it assumes the texture
of work hours / the blue / Govee light strips / on my
newly adorned cornice / replete with the solace of
working from home / I sit on my ergonomic work
chair / until I can't sit anymore / my laptop / imbued
with the subtle dignity of labour / thriving even at the
dead-end of dusk / my muscles unravel / to adjust to
the strain / I can hear my spine / from my wireless
headphone / cranking out / into these lines of code
I'm debugging / if every other thing halts / my jawbone
still works / I stick to this routine for hours / till an hour
is no longer an hour / to say my hands are workable / is
to say / I'm capable of dividing myself / into several
handymen / each of us / striving to be seen / here / every
nightfall is a lease / I assent to / as an anthill of
termites: / a nest of labouring / in all of these / I'm still
thankful that / the city's fuss no longer breaks my back /
& the traffic jams will come in the morning / without
having me at the forefront / I'm thankful I no longer
worry / about arriving at work earlier than the office birds /
once again / the screen’s light calls me to duty / & I must
make a line of best fit / out of this graph's mean / I bootstrap
the web of ideas / in allegiance / into a bright bulb / full of
reality / & let the night pass through its filament / while I
make wages from my beaded sweat / the night knows this /
knows how the mooned sky / sleeping on my rooftop / wakes
in defiance of the timezone / I'm only an eventful witness.

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​Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan (he/him/his) is a speculative writer of Izzi, Abakaliki ancestry; a finalist for the 2023 Rhysling Award; a nominee for the Forward Prize, Pushcart Prize, and Best of The Net Award; a data science/analyst techie; and a licensed medical laboratory scientist. He was the winner of the 2021 Write About Now’s Cookout Literary Prize. He has work at Strange Horizon, FIYAH, Uncanny Mag, Nightmare Mag, Augur Mag, Filednotes Journal, Antithesis Journal, Kernel Magazine, Mizna, and elsewhere. He tweets @wordpottersul1.