Touching Stuff

It’s your decision, but I wouldn’t do it.

I say it all the time, Don’t touch stuff.

And when I say it I really mean it.

And I really mean it now, too. You can

touch stuff if you want, but I wouldn’t.

It’s not that the stuff will hurt you

(at least, not a lot) but that

the stuff will leave a bad mineral taste

in your sleeping schedule. You might

have occasional insomnia or perhaps

over-sleep, waking up after

everyone else has eaten lunch. It’s

the stuff that makes people like this,

though most don’t realize it.

Even as I say this, there’s probably

someone thinking, I don’t

think touching stuff is that bad.

And you’re free to think that,

but a reckoning is coming and it

involves the touching of stuff.

You might pretend that the troubles

in your life are of a different variety,

but they are all the same variety,

a certain variety of touching stuff

and thinking that doing so is just fine.

It’s a cultural blind spot.