The Algorithm

Original Piece by Logan Grendel

ICE just kidnapped someone else and there was a protest and someone was hit with so-called rubber bullet but they'll never be able to close their right hand in a tight fist for the rest of their life because of the injury sustained and the neighbor's dog dug a hole under the fence again and snuck into our house because I think they're not feeding him or maybe even abusing him and there is an iranian or palestinian or lebanese woman screaming as she holds what's left of someone she loved and there's not enough pieces to determine who or how old they were because they were nearly atomized by the explosion but she is holding these undifferentiated pieces of a person up as if to demand answers from a clearly indifferent god and I just got a fire nude from someone I've been flirting with and I keep looking at it and feel the heat rising between my legs and the stock market was about to crash but the news says they're releasing more oil from a reserve so it'll be fine and my bestie's wedding is in two weeks and know I'll have to give a toast but I can't think of any stories I can tell in front of their family except maybe the time they came back from a deployment and had a burn mark on their lip and told me it was from when a hot piece of brass hopped out of their duty weapon wrong and got stuck on their face during a firefight with insurgents or terrorists or jihadists or whoever it was and they shot the body again even after they had downed the enemy because they were pissed off that they were gonna have a scar and I called them "hot lips" and we laughed and laughed but you had to be there my grandmother was at a protest outside her church and she said it was like when she was at a protest outside the state house 50 years ago my ex was at a protest outside a starbucks my co-worker was at a No Kings protest and then went straight to the airport to attend an AI leadership conference I'm hungry I think I want pizza? tacos? a burger? McDonald's? wait no the boycott wait no the burgers don't spoil after months wait where are the people they flew out on that cargo plane that flew out to the ocean and then flew back where are the teen girl children they're separating in ?Texas I think? that are pregnant but abortion is illegal and oh fuck my credit card is almost at the limit and the bill is due tomorrow but if I pay it today I can use it for grocery shop in two days what's in your wallet? I heard last time I went there are no more oranges from Florida someone tried to vote in my town and they said they weren't on the voter rolls and they had to show ID but they are trans so they just left without voting and I masturbated in the shower for the 5th day in a row even though I am so depressed by the news is that normal I cancelled therapy because they said politics was bad for my mental health and to just focus on the family they were the best part of waking up I'm loving it your way to just do it in good hands in the happiest place on earth is it snap, crackle, pop finger licking good in you someone stopped me and said they knew me from work and I didn't recognize them but they knew my name and where I worked so we chatted and I gave them my number and then I read about those glasses where they tell you everything about a person and think I remember them wearing weird glasses and it's 79 degrees outside but it's winter and it's 30 degrees outside but it's spring and my friend has "just allergies but I'm so tired" for the 4th time this year up from 3 last year and 2 the year before that and the dish was covered in dawn soap and it slipped out of my hand and smashed and all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put it together again because they're in the Epstein files and I think they said they were eating baby intestines but that can't be right turn right on red no right on red cross on the green not in between am I drinking too little water or too much is my carbon footprint on the sand from where Jesus carried me or from when he abandoned me because his father abandoned him to die in the worst way so we could eat his flesh and drink his blood and be appalled when all the kings men are eating flesh and drinking blood I really should get more vitamin B, K? More D, see? CNN says we'll win across the board in the mid-terms and never at any point did anyone say humpty dumpty was an egg and maybe tomorrow I'll protest with them but I'm just one person and what did one person ever do except that one person who set a building on fire where they were gonna build a new detention center that looked more like a concentration camp from the diagram I saw on ?was it Insta meta tiktok google facebook nightly news 60 minutes? and the owners cancelled the contract and that one white boy who i don't think did the thing they said but damn i read all those claims got paid out that week but what did one person ever do we do it all alone and you gotta stand on your own two feet and wow that sunset is lovely i heard the sunsets are so lovely there when the bombs stop falling long enough to stand outside what a difference a day makes