June 15, 2021

mutiny

“That’s two hours I’ll never get back,” I announce, when my virtual chat ends with
the virtual agent assigned to my case of the malfunctioning printer. And yet
some animal part of me had wakened in our tenuous exchange, a she-beast
chafing at the bit of a corporate takeover. She’d growled at the weak offers that came
her way, flattening the crumbs under her haunches, made of her body another body.
Hers was a clarity unburdened of decorum and I stood to the side, watching
the precision of her work, woozy with envy until I realized my hands were the arrows
she’d drawn and pointed, my words the teeth she’d bared. And now,
loosed out of the cage I thought was home, I can’t imagine
how I’ll ever go back.