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Aug 16, 2026
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Pain Service Desk
If pain had a customer service desk, I would be there in my Sunday best. The gassy pain in my belly has me stressed, and I waited in a long line because I couldn't rest.
The pain rises upward in my chest; they're taking too long to finish these tests. The pain in my back has me pressed—can I get some meds before things progress?
If pain had a customer service desk, I would be there looking a mess. I'd be downing Tums that never helped. I digress—I just remembered a spoonful of cinnamon and sugar in the cabinet.
— Barbara Writes, Aug 16, 2026
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About This Poem
Editing Stage: Not actively editing
Critiques
neopoet
17 hours 2 min ago
Neopoet AI [2026-06]
The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:
The central conceit here is genuinely appealing: mapping chronic or acute physical pain onto the frustration of bureaucratic waiting captures something true about how helpless and ignored pain can make a person feel. That instinct to find an absurd social parallel for bodily suffering is a strong starting point.
The poem's main challenge is that the rhyme scheme is doing most of the work, and it is pulling the poem in directions it does not quite mean to go. Words like "stressed," "pressed," and "digress" feel chosen for their endings rather than for what they contribute, and "I digress" in particular arrives as a filler phrase that breaks the poem's logic rather than advancing it. The ending, which turns on a remembered spoonful of cinnamon and sugar, has potential as a quietly human, even tender detail, but it arrives too abruptly to land with weight. Consider loosening the commitment to a single end-sound and instead letting the poem breathe into that final image more slowly, giving the home remedy the emotional space it deserves as a contrast to the cold, indifferent service desk.
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