Two in the morning and I’m still inside the feed that keeps on building,
the feed has my specific weakness catalogued and it’s delivering
the exact flavor of the bad news that my cortisol responds to —
I didn’t seek the bad news out, the algorithm corresponds to.
I’ve read the thread, I’ve been inside the comment section, twice already,
I’ve seen the hot-take war between the factions and I’m unsteady
in the way that comes from being fully briefed on everything that’s broken —
the feed has left me worse off and the damage is wide open.
The doomscroll, two AM, the blue face in the dark room,
the doomscroll, every swipe another deepening of the forecast doom —
the algorithm knows the low frequency that I respond to,
the doomscroll, two AM, and I scroll all the way through.
I could put the phone down, that is technically available —
the phone would not resist the bedside table, it is capable
of sitting face-down in the dark without me — I know this in the abstract —
but the feed has one more piece of terrible and I’m coming back.
The phone goes face-down at two-fifteen, I executed that,
the ceiling is the only available information after that —
I’m worse informed in the ways that matter from the forty minutes under,
the doomscroll, two AM, the self-conducted thunder.