Secondhand Grief
I cannot bear the turning of the news,
that endless reel of ruin, flood, and flame;
the thumb keeps scrolling, though the spirit knows
each fresh catastrophe appears the same.
A child pulled from the rubble. Forest smoke.
A graph ascending where it should decline.
Advertisements appear between the broke-
nness of the world and ask me if I’d like
new trainers. Moisturiser. Half-price flights.
The mind receives far more than it can hold.
Lives flattened into headlines, clips, and counts;
the dead translated quickly into rolls
of numbers scrolling past the news accounts.
And still the washing waits. The saucepan boils.
The dog needs walking. Someone needs a meal.
The strange offence of ordinary chores
whilst knowing all that suffering is real.
I turn away, yet carry what I’ve seen.
It settles somewhere underneath the skin:
a residue of smoke, though none has been
anywhere near the house I’m sitting in.
No distance holds. No border stays intact.
The world consists of fibre, wire, and screen.
A thousand griefs accumulate and stack
inside a nervous system never meant
to witness everything.
So some days I refuse
the practiced urgency, the breaking tone;
not out of peace, nor ignorance. I choose
the limits of a heart already prone.
Natalie Harveld