Low Battery
My hands are machines.
My eyes are screens.
My words are ones and zeros,
translated by satellite:
emojis bouncing between space and an iPhone.
I end each text with “lol” because
punctuation is for squares
and the anxiety of a period
is unbearable to send
and worse to receive.
It sounds like silence. Like ending.
I am a cyborg,
so I will become my couch.
Doomed: scrolling the screen in my hand,
numb to the one glowing across the room—
filling my peripherals. Dulling gray matter.
I’ve blocked out the sun—
My windows sealed, my air set to cool.
I rot beneath a blanket—
conditioned to comfort.
I silence your calls.
I ignore your texts.
Not because I missed them,
but because I wasn’t
ready for someone to care.
Surprises are unpleasant
for someone determined
to let their batteries die.
I don’t reply.
I am out of order.
My feet ache.
I leak every hour.
I can’t remember the last time
I was touched.
I am not functioning as my Creator intended.
I could use a tune up—
but I never registered my warranty.
Lessons From the Scroll
Toothpaste turns pineal glands to stone.
Calcified: simple minds.
Stop brushing.
Go fluoride-free.
Don’t trust the dentist.
They want your wisdom teeth.
Charge your water with crystals,
bathe them in moonlight.
Say a prayer
under your breath.
We all want to ascend, don’t we?
Buy a filter—
the tap turns the frogs gay,
and hard water showers kill
your microbiome.
Another daily genocide
we call normal.
Skip aluminum
laced deodorant,
under-tested vaccines,
and whatever’s in the Tylenol.
Cancer could be cured
with a parasitic cleanse
and nicotine.
I believe it for a second.
So I stink, smoke, scroll,
and don’t trust the birds.
The government built them.
Feathered drones,
sent to make sure
I don’t believe in Flat Earth.
Spielberg faked the moon landing.
The Titanic was an insurance scam.
The Twin Towers fell for profit,
sent men to war,
leveled cities,
and turned strangers into bodies,
we were taught not to mourn.
Because the news is for Boomers,
NPCs, and bureaucrats.
You won’t see Palestinians on your screens—
just dances, filters, and memes,
keeping us somewhere
between entertained and erased.
Scroll past your bedtime
and scroll past the corpses.
Numb is the new woke,
and dopamine
is cheaper than grief.
Scroll until the screen goes dark.
And even then,
you’ll find your reflection—
swipe again. Again. Again.
They’ve programmed depression
and we
love it.
The scroll never ends.
It replaces you.
It replaces me.
Peter Brindley is a poet based in Atlanta. His work explores intimacy, identity, and the fractures of modern life, with particular attention to complicity, meaning, and the ways self-perception shapes our understanding of the world. His poetry has appeared in TrashLight Press and is forthcoming in Cicada Song Press.
The Marbled Sigh 