you are not on call

for the pain of the world

I know you feel every hit of the hammer, beating

plowshares into swords,

and people into plowshares

and every time you fail to step between

the blow and its target

the injustice is sewn into your bones, too

The writer’s retreat was, as I feared, populated by Big Fish. Super established writers, and people who work at the top of various other fields like marketing and coaching and make a thousand dollars an hour and know how to blow dry their own hair.