Every Notification is a Kind of Whisper
The fruit bowl glows blue at midnight—
not from the screen but the silence
between pings, a sort of aching
pause no algorithm dares touch.
My neighbor’s Alexa murmurs
through the plaster like a priestess
with dementia, rustling queries
for weather, or where did the kids go?
You said you’d be right back
but that was before the VPN
and the wine-stained user agreements.
We schedule feelings now—
3:45 regret, 5:10 the ache
of watching yourself type “seen.”
Somewhere, a password expires
and forgets what it used to protect.
The mirror no longer returns my face.
—The Clergyman
Category: The Clergyman