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Most people don’t really see janitors.
They walk past with their eyes fixed on phones, shoes clicking across freshly mopped floors. They leave behind paper towels on sink counters and coffee rings on desks, assuming someone else will always clean it up. Someone invisible. Someone replaceable.
I stopped expecting to be noticed a long time ago.
My name is Martha. I’m sixty-three years old, and for more than four decades, I’ve worked nights. Quiet hours. The kind of hours when office buildings breathe differently, when rest stops hum softly under fluorescent lights, and when the world finally slows down enough for you to hear your own thoughts.
Some people call that kind of life lonely.
