“Much of what we buy today is meant to break or wear out long before we’re done using it. This is called planned obsolescence.” – Rachel Jonat

The end of the game has been foretold by the creators.

My “game over” will be a stroke or two,

Encoded already in my DNA,

Flowing through me now in some untriggered form.

And when it will happen,

Maybe I’ll recall the little girl holding her grandmother’s hand steady

To practice writing the alphabet’s shape,

To relearn the movements

Of walking with a right leg that doesn’t speak the same language as the left

Of tying shoes with a hand that grasps for a foreign tongue,

And I’ll misremember it,

Thinking that I am the grandmother

And that I’ve been through this all before.

When I was the little girl, the stroke made her voice call me by my mother’s name.

It sounded out of tune on her tongue.

But when my clock reaches the stroke of forgetting,

I’ll switch roles in the scene where

The little girl takes the old lady to the washroom

And I’ll think, since this has happened to me already,

There’s no need for shame.

The body that will have turned against me

Will allow these small mercies

To pave the road to obsolescence

With sardonic land mines.