Layoff

They called it redeployment,
as if a word could soften loss—
as if the walls didn’t echo
with names erased from tomorrow.

I listened silently,
a message too calm for what it meant
We appreciate your contributions.
The sentence ended. So did something in me.

Around me, silence took its seat—
the kind that hums after thunder.
A half-drunk coffee cooled beside
dreams that wouldn’t clock in again.

We joked about job security once,
laughed in breakrooms filled with light.
Now the laughter feels like a souvenir
from another life.

But grief is honest work, too—
sorting through what stays, what leaves.
Hope is fragile, but it shows up
in small, defiant ways:

a message from a friend,
a sunrise not yet canceled,
a voice inside that whispers—
You are more than what they let go.