Doctors’ orders:
Make time for self-care
Engage in pleasurable activities
Don’t surrender to a life unfulfilled.
So here I am.
Tomorrow I will remember
some errand I forgot today.
One click
and the problem will be solved.
The needed thing will arrive by magic
or rather
by the work of a tired human
sweating and straining
shelf to shelf
every movement monitored
every second accounted for
making sure my order is fulfilled.
What is self-care when the self
is subordinate to relentless optimization,
to electronic task masters whose genius creators
forgot that warehouse workers
have the same human needs
as engineers?
What gives me the right to expect fulfillment?
Who does it help if I don’t?
In between these questions
whatever space I can afford to occupy
feels too expansive,
every word I speak feels plagiarized.
I cannot trust my lying senses
cannot make sense of children in cages
cannot make peace with the rage.
Am I not complicit?
Do I cling too tightly to privilege?
In between these questions
I hear the sound, just beyond
the drumbeat of war
we’ve been here before
and before
and before
I don’t want to hear it.
What is the cost of silence and free shipping?
Free lunch, free will
illusions both
Who pays?
The bill is coming due.
Is misery a valid currency?
Is Joy a rose-scented extravagance?
In between these questions
I solve a crossword in the Times
drink another glass of wine
and another
and another
I don’t want
to sense the suffering of fellow creatures
to feel the fear our planetary peril warrants
to endure the nameless pain of sisterhood
to bear witness to death and dying
I do not want
the complex order of this life to go undelivered.
May the labor of fulfillment be shared among us,
may every need be met just in time.