I am delivered some bad news. Fill in the blank—
Someone got a cancer diagnosis. A parent has days
to live. The child has cognitive delays. The spouse
is cheating and she looks like a keeper. The pet
won’t make it. The house has a bad foundation.

Sorry for being crass but you know the drill.
Something that devastates you. Brings you to your
too tender knees, skin soft with sweat, silent screams
of muffled mania in a throat that has closed to the size
of god’s own fist, shoved deep and unforgiving.

Except this time, it doesn’t.
Devastate you.
What I’m saying is: this time it doesn’t devastate you.
It, well, it—it’s hard to explain.

It filters into your mainframe.

You compute the calibrations needed to maintain sanity.
There’s a swift and accurate calculation of which muscles
to fire to hold a steady smile. You pull the trigger,
adjust for authentic sparkle in the eyes, push “level up”
on eagerness in the voice, mute the tremors.

You’re taking this rather well. You present a plausible
explanation for the devastation. You back up your
findings with irrefutable facts, culled from a lifetime
of pent up potential. There are pie charts, quoted
experts. Even an Instagram reel set to shitty music.

The deliverer of this devastation believes you,
believes you’re taking this rather well. And this is where
it begins to break down. The deliverer invariably
distances themselves from you, sensing a disconnect.
Perhaps subconscious. Or subcutaneous.

Somewhere where the skin still crawls. Deep in the
underbelly of our most forgotten sins. Where the
miasma of memory first congealed and the slippery
eel of disassociation began its tentative slither out
and away from an active, bleeding heart.