When the Paster
Tells Us We Need to Cut Back on Our Screen Time
(October 2026)
My sister has a
brain tumor.
The doctors
gave her two years.
She’s now going
on five.
My employee
emailed the Director.
She said that I
hurt her feelings
when I asked
her to adhere
to the company
mandated hours.
My husband told
me last week
that he loves
me deeply,
but he doesn’t
find me sexually attractive.
He said it as
gently as he could,
in that sweet,
calm voice of his
that makes me
want to bash in his teeth
with my
mother’s cast iron skillet.
My adult
daughters don’t call anymore,
not since they
got married.
A mutual on
Twitter
(I will never
call it “X”)
told me that
they will start calling
once they start
having babies.
They’ll need
grandma for babysitting
while they go
out for mimosas with their
girlfriends.
My youngest
son, still living at home,
takes only 3
hours of College classes a semester.
I don’t even
know what he’s studying.
He only comes
out of his room
fifteen minutes
each day, to heat up
some Hot
Pockets and return to his
gaming.
And my feed,
my God,
my feed tells
me of women being raped
at Cornell,
murdered in
mass graves in South Africa,
a botched
execution of a woman
who killed her
rival
who was putting
the moves on her boyfriend,
a woman in a
wheelchair
after killing
her babies,
and my phone
tells me that I used it
1 hour and 14
minutes longer than the previous week,
and my pastor
said that we touch our phones
at least 100
times per day,
and another
article says that we spend
four to five
hours per day
on social
media.
And still they
wonder why
women are
always so angry.
Some mornings,
I awake,
and for the
briefest instant,
I am fifteen
years old, and the day is
bright and
filled with friends to hang out
with at the
mall after school, and we’ll
have pizza and
ice cream
and we’ll laugh
and talk about boys
and stupid
teachers and dimwitted parents
and whatever
movie is playing that week.
Then, I’ll turn
in the bed, see
your hamhock
shoulder, you
snoring like a
bear, and I will again
be
all that I am
now,
and all that I
am now
will have an
overwhelming urge,
to run out the
room,
out the front
door,
down the
street,
naked but for
the nightgown
with print of
reindeer and sheep
shouting HAPPY
SLEEP-MAS!
and I will
scream
and scream
and scream
and never ever
stop
screaming.
