WHAT I REALLY MEAN WHEN I SAY I’VE BEEN DOOMSCROLLING by Benjamin Ray Allee
We presumed the forbidden knowledge would be some eldritch thing. The death-in-thought, a word for God. A space at the universal end we could not reach. An unthinkable color. A demon in our brother.Horror of all horrors, it is none of these. The secret that obliterates the mind, the antidivinity, it is not great, it is not God, it is not ultimate.Instead, swiping up the cosmic edge, I find:A momma making breakfast. Using more eggs than I would’ve thought, apron on, divulging drama from the clothing store and I do not want to know—An athlete dancing. Sultry eyes for all who sees he sways and lets a rhythm catch him wild by the neck, tear my eyes away—A farmer mourning loss of calf. Seven hundred miles away and I can see his whiskers wet with loss, the space between proclaims heat-death—A toddler learning how to eat. How could I see it, know her name, not picture mandalic lives for her, some pruned by Murphy’s shears—Soothsayer claiming madness for the world. Espousing foolish notions that the secret is a word, a craft, a harbinger, a ghostly God whose visage is a killswitch, voice atomic bomb, a basilisk thought-virus unending and unstoppable, an elder mind we would commune with, be demanded by, and kneel to as we cry—No.There is a plum cut this evening, sweet trickle on the counter for a child I’ll never meet, and I do not want to know that.There is a meal, device, a ritual taken in my backyard by neighbors opening their folds to me look away, look away, look away—There is a quiet dance we’re sharing that once belonged to the space beneath our eyes.I have seen it. I have found the killing thought.