Principle of Sufficient Reason
The arc of the surgeon’s arm
as she lifts the skin from your
left buttcheek and reinstalls
the strip over yr burned area,
good as new like a commodity
only it went from on you to on
you rather than from without
to consumed. If you assume
the ark has enough room for all
forms of life then perhaps you
think there’ll be a lot of empty
rooms, seeing as the undersea
fauna have no need to come
on a boat and even less need
to be led there by humans.
So you can sit in the vacant
chamber reserved for two blue
whales and nurse your newly-
dressed wound in front of the
green background you thought
would look so good against
their huge, majestic bodies.
You can stay there and scroll
through pictures of them
on yr phone for hours, failing
to notice that you haven’t felt
the itching in the affected area
since your back slid down the
green boards and your first set
of search results came through.
Tom Snarsky teaches mathematics at Malden High School in Malden, Massachusetts, USA.
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