*Terms and Conditions*
Each morning the inbox fills like a tank—
not with water, but with tasks shaped like teeth.
We open them, obedient, clicking consent
to lives we didn’t mean to draft,
checkboxes ticked while yawning over cereal.
Outside, a man walks three dogs
wearing headphones larger than his astonishments.
The sky is buffering. Someone
updates their status to “finally thriving,”
and I can’t help but believe them.
There’s a park where no children scream,
only joggers loop like syntax errors
in a sentence God hasn’t approved—
He’s still reviewing the Privacy Policy.
Somewhere a soul is denied access
for entering the wrong CAPTCHA phrase.
How many buses pass before
we realise we’ve become the queue,
not the riders?
You kiss me like scanning a QR code:
efficient, lit by blue.
And the hologram of my mother says,
“Sorry, this version of grief is no longer supported.”
—The Clergyman