I walked out of the store today at exactly five and the sliding doors felt like a guillotine cutting me off from the rest of them, it’s 76 years of this and you’d think I’d be used to the guilt by now but the air on Broadway was thick and humid like a wet wool blanket and I just stood there for a second watching the taxis fly by. My floor lead, Sarah, she’s twenty-four and her eyes are always red around the edges, subconjunctival hemorrhage probably from the stress of it all, and she was in the breakroom hunched over her phone trying to find someone, anyone, to pick up her toddler because her sitter flaked again and she was practically whispering into the receiver. They were all in there, a huddle of tired bodies talking about the SACRIFICE and the "biological imperative" that keeps them tethered to those tiny humans and I just tucked my keys in my pocket and left because I could, because I have no one waiting for me to be anything other than a body in a chair. It’s the sheer EROSION of it that gets me, the way this city grinds you down into a fine powder until there’s nothing left but the shift schedule and the rent check, and I heard Marcus saying he hasn't seen his daughter awake in three days because he’s pulling doubles just to keep the lights on in that cramped place in Queens.