"My brother died in the last 13 hours and I have to be at work" by PQHAÜS

"My brother died in the last 13 hours and I have to be at work" by PQHAÜS

(Acrylic on canvas / 16x20 inches / 2025)

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When his brother died, grief hit like a violent wave, crushing his chest, stealing his breath. But what truly made him choke was the world’s indifference. People laughed, debating lunch options, while his team hung balloons for a coworker’s birthday. Voices rose in cheerful chatter, oblivious to the black hole expanding inside him. His world had shattered, yet everything around him carried on, untouched, as if nothing had changed.

He stood in the copy room, zoned out, staring blankly at the printer as it whirred and spat out sheets of paper. The sound was deafening in the silence of his mind, a mechanical hum that seemed to stretch out endlessly. The fluorescent lights above buzzed, flickering slightly, casting a sterile glow over the tiny, windowless room. The smell of warm toner and paper filled his nostrils, thick and artificial, making him feel like he was suffocating. He had come in here to print something—what was it? A report? A contract? He couldn't remember. His hands rested on the edge of the machine, his fingers pressing into the cold plastic as if grounding himself to something real, something solid. But nothing felt real. The world outside this room was still moving, still functioning, and that fact alone made him feel like he was trapped in some twisted nightmare.

Somewhere between waiting for the last page to print and the weight of his own breath, his grip on his coffee slipped. The cup tipped, and a rush of steaming liquid cascaded over his hand, pooling onto the floor. He stared at it, watching it spread, but his mind was too busy drowning in sorrow to care. The burn barely registered, a distant sting lost beneath the suffocating heaviness in his chest. He should have jumped back, should have wiped it off, but instead, he just stood there, watching, as if it were happening to someone else.

It was then that he realized how brutally indifferent life truly was. Grief was not some poetic, dramatic collapse—it was standing in a fluorescent-lit copy room while a printer whirred, pretending you weren’t dying inside. It was pulling out freshly printed documents with shaking hands, forcing himself to remember why he had even come here in the first place. It was stepping out of the room with coffee still dripping onto the tile and walking back into the office like nothing had changed, when in reality, everything had.

The world did not stop for grief. It never would. And that was the most inhuman thing of all.