LA is on fire and I’m a sitting duck

My skin crawls as I watch a hand, disembodied, reach yet again into the Tollhouse bag. Bright, artificial yellow. It burns my eyes. Countless chocolate chips are shoveled down my gullet as if crumbs to a wretched, starving creature. I’m only jarred out of my sinful haze by catching si th r of my reflection. That face staring back at me - I don’t know it. Dry, lifeless eyes, the expression of a corpse, chocolate smeared on the edges of my mouth. Disgust rises like bile in my throat. This stranger lives a soft life. Hours spent lounging by the fire, fleshy stomach warm and sated, screen filled with ads and the inane, I have never known struggle. The world blazes with fire and the screams of dying children surround the soul, so I employ synthetic numbing agents. Blue light has seared my nerve endings into inactivity while glucose rots me to my core. Do my vices truly dim the pain of helplessness? Or do they simply induce a coma of false innocence until I’m able to face the world? “My” face stares back at me, haunted and hated. I am vitriol, bottled up and consumed. For consumption is the only skill we have left; purses and devices and anything worth a cent are boxed up, framed with silver tongues, and shoved down our throats faster than we can blink. And we take the poison, digesting it like the obedient cattle we are. Not even thousands of victims can rouse us from our stupor, willingly chosen to numb the conscience and the void yawning from self-inflicted purposelessness. Ibuprofen for the guilt of privilege and powerlessness. I choke on the silver spoon from which I’m fed these pills but find I swallow regardless.