Month: January 2024

There was a power outage at the water treatment plant.
The redundant transformers worked brilliantly… they both failed at the same time.
The pumps stopped, and the water pressure dropped for a few minutes.
It took a few hours for the city to issue a boil water warning text messages.
So, I boiled water and filled up some pitchers.
Drinking. Cooking. Brushing my teeth.
And I didn’t shower for two days.
When the notice finally came out to stop boiling water, I was boiling water for tea.
I stopped. I looked at my phone and sighed.
And took a shower.

Danny can’t write poetry.
It’s just words that rhyme. Like a six year-old would write.
So he asked one of those machines on the internet.
And it wrote poetry for him.
Good poetry. Not great, just good.
Good enough, because when he wrote it in the card he gave to the girl with the next locker over, she smiled, and she kissed his cheek.
He kept the internet machine on his phone.
And it told him the things to say, to write, and to do.
The cheerleader had the same thing on her phone.
To tell her how to respond.