For lent
I gave up caffeine—
my drug of choice.

Somewhere
I had decided that life was
too hard
to live without caffeine,
so I kept slurping it down.

Oh God, now I have to feel!
Now I know when I’m tired.
now I can’t blame my heart racing,
my body aching,
on caffeine.

Survival had become easy.
Two hours of sharp brain function
to four hours of survival.
How blunt everything feels now,
how dull and commonplace.

How dirty the floor,
how gusty the wind,
how hot the sun,
how slow the day crawls
when I’m not frantic.

Slow. Slower. Slowly
the pace of my life returns
to humanity.

Shorn, my prayers are angrier,
my meditation melancholy.
My laughter lavish.
My emotions acute.

A sharp brain for two hours a day
trapped my senses
in a cage of survival.

Why do I hate being human
so much?

Sara Cassidy is a wife, mother, college student, and writer from Oklahoma.