The first sign is that something wasn’t quite right

will inevitably be your stomach, which flip-flops like a dying fish.

Then the computer of your brain will whir so tremendously

you’ll think you can hear it puffing out air through your ears.

The discomfort is immediate.

At first you’ll try to rationalise your position

a neat little argument will come into formation like soldiers

carrying arms of “buts” and “actually”s.

Only their defenses won’t do a thing to help you sleep.

Cheap mystery novels will distract long enough

for your eyelids to flutter close.

You might delete it, but it won’t matter.

More permanent than Moses’ words of stone

the words will forever float between you and the world.

Your thumbs will rush to offer apologies

but you know, and they know,

there’s no going back.

We were never made to absorb so many ideas

they make our knees bleed as carry them.

Our black and blue eyes keep coming back to that glow

scrolling and

torturing and

battering ourselves

over and

over again.

In the wild west of words there’s only one way forward

only one way to cope when glowing embers give off no heat.

To take a walk in the newborn morning air and not forget to breathe.