The one-star Google review waded into my Saturday morning web surf time

It put another check in the column of “out of my mind”

I read it twice

Thought about yesterday, how I thought I listened well and was nice

If it hadn’t been Saturday, I would have felt the impending doom

Something – I don’t know what – pressing in on me like a monsoon

My boss on one side, clients on the other

My gremlins in the middle with me

Uhh, I still felt a little smothered

So I went for a run

It fixes everything

Never mind that it was raining

I reflected on life like I always do

Isn’t a job just something to get us through?

For seven years I’ve felt like an imposter

Is it true or are those my gremlins

I let the words of that Google review sink in

How many times have I traded my soul for a check

Or for a good review

How long till I retire or expire?

How many people die on my watch

It feels like everything is botched

Am I a puppet on the string

I couldn’t decide if I should’ve run slow or fast

But there was something amazing:

When jogging on a very familiar road

I saw a humungous snapping turtle – dead on the curb

His neck was stuck out, looked like his spinal cord was severed

I wanted to stop and look

In passing I saw his big, round, dark shell

A little further down the road there was another tell

Willow Wood Road was like a proverb

There was another creature on the left side curb

A road-killed rabbit

Looked like he’d been slaughtered as he tried to cross the street

Had the two creatures come there to compete?

It seems the old riddle was wrong about the tortoise and the hare

Wherever they were going, neither one made it there

As I ran the last stretch, I thought about my life

My desperate obsession to optimize

Neither the turtle nor the rabbit made time

There’s no way to please everyone

I had a little more clarity at the end of my run