A Piece of Obvious Satire with No Confessional Aspects Whatsoever

Tell me more about why I should feel guilty.

Tell me more about systemic inequality.

Tell me more about how I can’t understand or even empathize

with other people because I don’t share their experience.

Tell me more about how being male

(sorry, very sorry, I meant being a man),

being white,

being straight,

somehow makes me so powerful

that my simple inaction

is a force of oppression.

(Wouldn’t that be lovely?

I sit and imagine it, sometimes,

oppressing people in my sleep,

or causing suffering while I eat my corn flakes,

passively feeding into repressive regimes of power

while I waffle around on Netflix and end up not

watching anything because it took me too long

to decide what to watch.)

You’re too kind, really,

when you tell me why I should feel guilty.

It’s not that I don’t want other people to suffer,

it’s just that you make it out like I’m some kind of super-oppressor,

and I haven’t earned that yet.

I appreciate it, really—you’re always so very nice.

But my ego isn’t so fragile

that I can only put up with myself

by imagining myself at the top of a pyramid.

Much as I appreciate it,

it’s really not necessary.

It’s not that I’m wrapped up in self-loathing,

so that the only way I can love myself is by hating myself.

It’s not that I’ve so internalized every bit of guilt

I’ve ever been offered, to the point that I could never be good

so I try to imagine myself enjoying the role of supreme evil.

It’s not that I feel so little power over myself

that I can only survive

on delusions of omnipotence.

It’s not that I blame things on others

(though I appreciate your contribution)

so I can escape this constant sense of guilt.

It’s not that I’m afraid of everything,

and that I’m overwhelmed by the wrongness of the world.

It isn’t any of those things.

It’s just what it is, you know?

At least it won’t last forever.