Certain (many) aspects of the digital working world seem profoundly negative to me and tend to grind me down—meaningless work, digitally neutralized communication, the overall inhuman and unnatural nature of the digital landscape. This poem was written during a time when I was feeling particularly bothered by these things.
Spiritual Life
I mute my unhappiness. I do not see it, feel it until my body wakes hours before the day begins—too alert like a deck board below slack sails that were once strained in fullness. Now this non-sleep non-move, this hot, dry stillness. Next to me my husband finally sleeps late into the morning, and the dog, totally immune to the lies of daily industry and chore watches me unblinkingly and fine. In a few hours he will splay across the sunny floor and bark and dig in his dreams and I, at that time, will be one foot in front of a monitor, ignoring, denying the lump in my throat, the sugar chemicaling through my cells. I will be a whir and also plated on that sea— no oars to move. No wind, just a sail filled with longing.