The God of Minor Sufferings

I want to make your life miserable.

Not like in the movies.

Not gasoline

or masked men

or your car on fire

outside a restaurant window.

I mean smaller things.

I want your sleeves

to slide down while washing dishes.

I want the grocery bag

to split at your front door.

I want your smoke alarm

to chirp once every forty minutes

until you begin speaking to it

like a relative with dementia.

Sometimes, late at night,

I imagine you chosen

for additional screening

while other travelers

the lucky

walk on by.

I imagine your phone

falling face-down into the toilet at 2 a.m.

Your boss saying

“quick chat?”

at 4:58 on a Friday.

I know what this is.

A child’s courtroom.

A pocket-sized religion.

The replaced, the ghosted,

the one staring at a message

marked Seen three hours ago —

all of us praying softly

to the god of minor sufferings.

Because almost nobody

really wants revenge.

Not truly.

We want your new lover

to notice how loudly you chew.

We want your meeting

to freeze on one slide too long.

We want you standing in light rain

patting every pocket slowly

while nearby

your keys continue existing

without you.

Just enough misery

to make the universe seem fair.

By morning it usually fades.

The coffee steams.

Traffic moves.

Somewhere you are still waiting

with a cart full of groceries

while a register opens

and I glide past.

The mind survives this way.

And still, sometimes,

while folding laundry

or lying awake beside someone kind,

I feel that small dark theater

warming itself behind my ribs,

patiently waiting

for your screen to buffer

at ninety-nine percent.