RIPE FOR DISRUPTION
B. asks about my personal pain points ahead of a software brainstorm, for a program
that could cure me of my ills. She tells me she can’t think of a bite-sized problem,
easily solved by a well-designed app, easy enough to click around on a Tuesday bus.
Everything’s complex. Everything is just too complex. I tell her I don’t want to worry
about war anymore. Here’s some pain: empty walls, no art.
B. wants leaving to be easier. I want men who believe us when we say keeping is a full
house, no one’s vocation. I want smut to be revered and to be shared
like gifts. Like how shaking out one’s hips is the most efficient way to cry.
She says staying quiet doesn’t work. I say the elimination diet is too lonely.
I want the food that is killing me to be caught and slaughtered at harvest.
I want a barn to be raised to celebrate the smoking of it. Breasts, naked, dancing.
I want a software program to tell me my to-do list is actually for the month
and not for this one day when I’d be more useful in sleep. I want money to feel safe.
I want a librarian for the internet! I want many librarians for the internet!
My pain points? Look! How much there is, and with only two hands!
B. says we could whittle an escape boat. B. asks what if we knew where to look?
Chat roulette for free therapy. A grimoire for the gossip inside that spoils me.
How sisters remedy the isolation of our times. They remind me to move slowly.
Not to drink the ocean before they’ve boiled it. (I am) / (you are) so thirsty.
I am 13 again, writing with strangers on the internet without the risk
of meeting them. Or them seeing how I live like this. Sharing my ideas like
what sex might feel like if I gave aliens the wrong name. I want AI Louise Glück
to write my friends’ eulogies. I want to pay attention to you. And me.
And you: paying attention to me.