You realise you haven’t eaten in days.

Dirty dishes line the counters; your twin toddlers

glitch in and out of their high chairs, mustering

twin howls of outrage.

You give up;

pass out on a floor slick with plumbing malfunctions.

Someone, as always, is watching

and will come to your aid.

Your husband is home from work

but his pay barely touches the bills strewn

across the front lawn. Sometimes

you wish for a meteor, or a swarm of bees.

Sometimes you think the only way out

of this suburban hellscape is through the foundations,

trapped waist-deep, pissing yourself into the cellar.

Someone will make it all right;

and anyway none of this is real:

leading scientists

guess we are ninety-nine-per-cent probably

living a simulation.

Against your better judgment, you pull up a chair and

Play Video Games until 6 a.m.

You realise you haven’t eaten in days.