i'm good, thanks. how are you?
i cant believe i have to wake up tomorrow
breakfast of quick fire dopamine,
scrolling for a glimpse of something not completely fucked but instead seeing a picture of a baby's mangled body like a discarded toy
her beautiful cheeks cold and dusty, her rescuers wailing
the imagery hasn't blunted my empathy yet and i sob quietly on my commute to work,
taking a deep breath as the final tear rolls and i snuffle a brave oblivious face, swallow my SSRI with an energy drink,
crack a smile
my friends are holding signs and pickets at the dock
i'd love to be there but i have to keep my nose clean for the future
so my son doesn't have to worry about our finances
and my parents can get old without worrying about me being homeless again
i hope they forgot about the 8 months i spent sleeping on a couch
it seems so trite to be constantly pushing the genocide into the corner of my brain so i can still function day to day
it sucks to feel
it sucks so much to feel something and to be able to do almost nothing
whatever deity watches over us in a Christian heaven needs to know that hell is a comparative utopia
because the world is much more evil than the threatened abyss of heat, torture and bruxism i learnt about at school
where people who think they're getting into heaven decide to forfeit conscience in favour of whatever the fuck it is they think is better
conscience is meant to be a stone in a shoe, not to be conditioned against but to be dealt with
the blister treated as a reminder of the time i tried to ignore it
living skin can sometimes be forgiving
i donate my last $10 to a tent fund in Rafah, i get paid tomorrow so it doesn't matter but i have bills, i wish i could give more, truly
it feels so selfish to find it hard to get up, really
it feels so privileged to say "i sometimes don't want to live" because it's a choice i can make
but there's babies who actually wanted to live and didn't get to choose
it's clear that the Western white skin deity hates their children, our children
and its own children too
the exponential guilt multiplies
relative suffering relative suffering relative suffering
relative celebration for breathing, for drinking and making coffee
to hear menial complaints and not flinch
to be frustrated at prospective grief that lingers for my parents
the guilt of not doing the dishes and folding laundry
i wish they had those worries too, instead of pulling their infants from the rubble