no worthwhile aspirations

 no worthwhile aspirations

The ladders are immaculate—
polished rungs, fingerprint-free,
leaning carefully against nothing.

In the atrium, ambition hums
like a vending machine that only accepts
antique coins and quiet favors.
The lights stay on because someone once
promised they always would.

Here, verbs are promoted to nouns.
Movement is rebranded as patience.
The calendar is a museum of deadlines
that learned how not to arrive.

Every oath is laminated.
Every apology arrives early,
already forgiven by the furniture.
Hands shake themselves.
Pens sign what the room has already decided.

You can feel the absence working overtime:
a breeze where courage should be,
a shadow doing the job of a spine.
Ideas queue politely, then forget
why they came.

No one steals the future.
It simply goes missing between meetings,
misfiled under “later,”
while everyone practices the noble art
of standing still with great conviction.

The mirrors are generous—
they return your face without friction,
no questions asked,
no velocity detected.
Even gravity looks embarrassed.

Somewhere, a horizon clocks out early.
Somewhere, a child learns the local dialect
for silence.
Somewhere, potential is taught to sit up straight
and wait for instructions that never quite form.

History doesn’t scream here.
It clears its throat,
adjusts its tie,
and agrees not to make a scene.

Time, meanwhile, behaves like entropy always does:
it increases—quietly, irreversibly—
proving that systems don’t need villains to decay,
only enough symmetry to cancel momentum.