Researching

I am trying to buy something for my [[husband]]

Who wakes up every morning at 5 am

With terrible lower back pain

I could buy a lumbar support pillow

But they say that’s no good

That it only accentuates the curve

I could buy a new mattress 

but how would we dispose of the old one

And besides it’s only a few years old 

and [[my mother]] bought it for us

I could buy a new box spring 

But it didn’t even help

When we put the mattress on the floor

I could buy a mattress topper 

but what if [[the cat throws up on it]]

Still, I decide to look them up

Online reviews are truly the downfall

Of a person like me

There could be 4,800 five-star reviews

And I’d look at that little staircase of stars

*****

****

***

**

*

And go straight to the lowest one

This person says it smelled like chemicals

This person said it was like sleeping in quicksand

This person says it was too hot, there was no airflow

This one’s too expensive

This brand claims to have a sale for just one day

As if their algorithm hasn’t simply parsed me

as a sucker for one-day sales

This one has only 5-star reviews

Obviously it can’t be trusted

Ok, let me go back

Let me google the same thing I googled before

Let me open a seventeenth tab

And see what Fred R in Michigan has to say

After [[an hour or so]]

I become nauseous with possibility

I CAN’T DO THIS, I [[yell]]

I simply can’t do this

If you want something for the bed, you’ll have to find it yourself

My husband has been sick with a sore throat

And now they are resting in bed

Are [[you mad]] at me, I ask

Yes, I’m mad because I had finally fallen asleep

And then you woke me up

By yelling at me