Friday Afternoon by Colette Maxfield

Friday Afternoon

Nina did something

That she shouldn’t have done.

Giddily, thoughtlessly, she looked for an all staff mailing list

For help in her search for an apartment.

Yes she pressed send.

Now thirty thousand people deleted or filed or answered

Why are you emailing me about this.

One person replied with a sweet discursive essay which annoyed people further.

Stop emailing the list about this.

Can everyone stop using the all staff reply please.

Next came the out of offices.

This defunct old mailing list had a setting glitch

It was merrily accepting and looping auto replies back to its withering staff body.

The messages now came quick and furious

Can someone turn this off (they didn’t ring I.T.)

Nina added a sorry

And as the system started to blaze in front of her sorry face

Because the system was so efficient it couldn’t stop sending itself auto reply messages

The screen flickered as a reflection of her vacant frightened eyes.

She did not move at five o clock to reach the apartment she didn’t yet own.

Hundreds and hundreds of emails a second made for a very long weekend

And when they found her there, wrapped around her monitor,

On Monday morning,

Civilisation had collapsed.