I Don’t Want to Change

10 February 2021 Wednesday Prose Poem Prompt: routines

Routines

I resist using my phone to order food. To have unknowns running up and down the aisles that were my haunts. Don’t want them doing what I do. Don’t want them seeing what I should see.

I like touching the things I will eat. Holding them, feeling that connection to nature. The smell of the earth. The weight of the juice inside a pineapple tells me about the world it came from. The hands that picked it. The heat that beats down on those whose lives are connected to the soil.

I want that connection. Don’t want bags of brown paper. Don’t want masked women dropping packages off with a knock on the door. Waving to their backs as they speed away in unmarked cars.

Fuck change if change is cold and disconnects me from where I came from. The hell with Innovation if it makes me feel like an App — interfacing with the world — but never talking to it.

I like the routine of meeting Life head on; smelling its smells. Hearing its anger, Its joy — the sadness rolling off the shoulders of those who struggle but persevere. Knowing I am one with what matters.

Routines are channels through which life flows. Slowly, quickly, with great thought or indifference, it doesn’t matter. As long as it never stops.

Prompt: Another from J.D. Harms, this one about routines. Those things we become attached to, look forward to, resist and yet feel isolated from when we are deprived of them. Feel free to add to the chain.

J.D. Harms Tree Langdon Amy Marley, Harley King Tim Maudlin Karen Madej Gurpreet Dhariwal R Tsambounieri Talarantas Trista Ainsworth Michele Till Liam Ireland James Knight Robert Trakofler Dr Mehmet Yildiz Agnes Laurens Desiree Driesenaar Salvatore Cagliari janny’s heart