I sit in a burning room

I sit in a burning room

I sit in the monotony that is my existence

I face a wall with a screen

Watching little fires everywhere

Always

Addicted to vicarious living

Can you call it living?

Filling the tedium of days and nights

Sloth wrapping me in its welcoming embrace

The screen acts as my window to the outside

But

I bathe in privilege

Able to face this wall

Able to shut off the noise on the screen

Unaware my curtains are up in flames

Because they haven’t reached me... yet

A flame will lick my wall

But nothing catches

So I go on sitting

After all

Why would I move for but a flicker?

It is only a warning, after all

God forbid what can’t reach me

What goes on outside these windows

The little fires I tune into

A highlight reel of someone’s reality

My wall muffles it all

A click of my screen shuts it all off

Their suffocated screams

Their pleas for eyes

Their begging for someone to listen

But my indolence blinds me from turning around

And I continue to sit in my burning room

Facing my wall

Mesmerized by my screen

In a world afire