Certified Fine By Someone

Okay so — RAPID, spelled out letter by letter like it's revving an engine, and then just "Slow." What the hell. You don't get to floor it and then immediately pump the brakes, poem. Pick a lane.

"explIcate" — and there it is, hidden in the capitals: E-X-I. Exit. You built an escape hatch into the actual word that means "explain yourself," and you did it quietly, on purpose, like you knew I'd have to stare at it for ten minutes to notice. Rude.

"butwheye" — I genuinely don't know if this is "but why" or "but where" and at this point I don't care, I just want a straight damn answer.

"No handholding or making things eas—" and then it just STOPS. Cuts the word dead. And then, way the hell down the page, alone, no warning: I. E. R. Easier. Ripped clean in half and left scattered like the poem couldn't even be bothered to keep its own word intact. That's just cruel. You couldn't let one word stay together?

CONTROL staggers down the page tripping over its own fucking feet, then later the poem has the audacity to go "Escher" like it's taking a bow. Yeah, I see the staircase, congratulations, you did a trick. And meanwhile there's a soft little (Confined) sitting next to a harder [Trapped] like — pick one, are we being quietly stuck or violently stuck, I need to know how scared to be.

"Exhibit a: confirmed" — now I'm on trial. For what. I didn't do anything, I'm just trying to read your poem.

"Distract from disaster / Distater from scandal / Scandal for scandal" — Distater isn't even a real word, it's disaster and distract mashed together like you were covering up the cover-up of the cover-up, and buried right in there, small, easy to miss: H E L P. Just sitting there. Quietly screaming. While I'm over here going what the fuck is happening in this stanza.

"10safety10" — a safety rating for something that is clearly not fucking safe. Then S T A B falls down the page the exact same way CONTROL did, like you reused your own trick to hide a knife in it the second time. That's not clever, that's just mean.

"B.u.t. it's not my job to make sure you're okay" — stammered out letter by letter like even the poem is bracing for how much that's gonna land.

Then "Please a / M.inutes / C.ilence" — a moment's silence, spelled like it's already carved on a fucking headstone, and I'm just sitting here like, a moment of silence for WHAT, you never told me what happened.

And "Ytniatrec" backwards is "certainty," and "tired like certainty" is such a specific, infuriating kind of exhausted — tired not from doubting but from never once being allowed to. Then "Is tyred?" loops back to the RAPID/SLOW car thing from line one, and now I've figured out this whole poem's been a damn car this entire time — floored, then stalled, worn flat on one side, still insisting it's sure about something it clearly isn't.

So here's my actual answer, still annoyed: this thing is about pretending you're fine while you're absolutely not, and it won't just say that, it makes the page do the falling-apart instead of the words. Which is a hell of a trick. I still don't fully "get it," and I don't think I'm supposed to — I think that's kind of the whole damn point.