Continuity

The small trees they planted, to try and
regrow the shade, bend like plastic straws
in the heavy gusts from the East.

They waste time playing chess on back
porches that line up almost exactly with
the arguments they have about what makes
them angry.

New organs are dropped on door steps by
hovering drones, controlled by a woman
drinking tea at a computer.

Customers open the packages to find new
pieces of themselves that are sewed in
digitally by the mechanical limbs attached
to the mirrors in their bathrooms.

Trading time for everything takes its toll on
the lost ships with broken astrolabes trying
to deliver goods over seas at the direction
of an application that only considers them
contractors.

They are forced to drift without
steering so that their hours don’t pass the
maximum. It’s cheaper just to let them all stay
lost.