By Eva Dias Costa in Lessons in the Quiet — 13 Apr 2025

Glitch

If we were war,
we’d call it necessary.
We’d speak of strategy, flags,
lines drawn and redrawn.
We’d praise discipline,
honour the dead,
forget the fire.

If we were cancer,
we’d marvel at our growth –
how we endure,
how nothing stops us.
We’d say we have purpose:
to multiply,
to thrive in darkness,
to take.

If we were famine,
we’d call it balance.
A reckoning.
A long lesson.
We’d say the hungry
must learn.

But we are life.
So we speak.
We decorate the damage,
name our urges,
call our noise truth.

But maybe we are
just a brief interruption –
a system error
mistaking itself
for meaning.