Overload

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keyboard

“I can’t do this anymore!”
The laptop stares at me from the kitchen table
where I sit, defeated head fallen into helpless hands.
It has stalked me from my work office to my home.
Black and white pixels layer documents across its screen,
a lasagna of files dumped from an overstuffed virtual briefcase.

I can’t do this anymore.
My husband stares at me from the kitchen counter
where he sits, a lukewarm mug of coffee cupped in soft hands.
Did I say that out loud?
His disapproving frown indicates that I did.

I shove the opened laptop across the table.
It stops just shy of the edge.
I wish it would have fallen,
hit the linoleum floor and
shattered into a million pieces.
I wish I could do the same.

“Two more years,” he says.
“Stick with it for two more years, and then I can retire.
We’ll move to the valley and you won’t have to work.”

Two more years? I can’t do that.
Nor can I fathom any middle ground between
two more years and not anymore.

I can feel myself being compelled toward the edge
where I will teeter until the inevitable fall.
I wonder how many years it will take
to recover the million pieces.

In response to the dVerse Poetics prompt:

“… the Poetics challenge today is to write a confessional verse in the style of [Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton…] … or write something which plays with the ideas expressed here — to put your regrets, your guilts, your sins, your humanity, your lived experiences, and all that you have kept within, out there through unbridled frankness or hyperbole or hidden allusions and metaphors or in any which way you want. It is all about challenging the restrictions that we impose in our written expression and to share something which is depictive of our own self.” 

29 thoughts on “Overload”

  4. Oh, wow. I could feel the anger and frustration right on the surface of this. Also, I can relate so much to this! I’m in that purgatory of time as well, and can’t fathom the the distance or repercussions. So well done.

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  8. Oh, both the stress and the angst are palpable in your words. There is a lot of theatrics in the setting of this scene like the laptop teetering on the edge, which again adds into the confessional narrative. The despair of the emotional distance and this breaking is quite painful. Very well penned!

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  12. I was very concerned about you…
    Such a relief to discover this was a flash back from a very difficult time. Sometimes it’s good to revisit, and, to celebrate tough roads traversed and triumphs earned.
    Keep well 💌

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    • Thank you, Jane. Yes, that was a whole ‘nother lifetime. When picking up the shattered pieces of one’s life, one gets to choose which pieces to keep and which ones to relegate to the dust bin. For me, it’s been transformative.

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