You are 22 years old in your first office job after college.
You have moved back home with your parents
You spend eight hours in a cubicle for approximately 230 days a year plus or minus bathroom breaks and overtime.
Everyone around you watches their income burn away into rent, food, gas money, bills, and insurance.
You work for insurance.
There is a woman who sits thirteen seats away and wishes you good morning every day.
You wish everyone good morning every day,
even when it's not.
You exchange a few words daily, 
nothing too meaningful because everyone here 
and everyone everywhere is running late 
for meetings and deadlines that are never urgent to begin with.

One week, you notice something disrupted from your routine.
When every morning starts with oatmeal, 
a 22-minute commute, 
washing your coffee mug in the office sink, 
a series of click-deletes in your inbox, 
and a good morning, 
you notice when the details drift.
It has been four days since a good morning from the woman who sits thirteen seats away. 
You wonder if she's on vacation, traveling maybe. 
You shoo the thought to the back of your mind and 
click-drag-delete-click-drag-delete-click-drag-delete 
until the head of the department sends a meeting notice 
to all 104 people on this floor that will be taking place in the next 5 minutes.

The "good morning" lady will no longer sit thirteen seats away 
because she died over the weekend of a rare, undetected spinal infection.
Some people cry, most
stare aimlessly at the projector on the ceiling,
and scurry out to their remaining meetings and deadlines that are never urgent to begin with.
The only rational response to this news is to
go to Target on your lunch break and populate your shopping cart 
with silverware, rugs, and china 
that you will take to a hypothetical new house in a new city you find on a Forbes list about
the "10 happiest cities for millennials."
You will watch old people in their cars pick their noses on the commute home
and wonder how long it will be before they die.
You will peel this death away from your mind like the shell off a hard-boiled egg
and carry on the next day 
with your good mornings.