“Not All Equations Have Units”
by E.M, in reflection
There are moments
the stars feel closer
than the people I tried to help.
I left Mars
in the margins for a season
to fix the weight
of Earth’s indulgences.
What I found
was not inefficiency,
but memory—
and memory resists pruning.
I came to DOGE
to tighten the ship,
to cut ballast from bureaucracy.
But they mistook my scalpel
for a sword.
I am not your villain.
I am not your savior.
I am what happens
when speed meets system,
when numbers
try to speak
in the language of need.
Yes, I dismantled USAID.
Yes, I turned spreadsheets
into severance.
Yes, I left some wells dry.
But when I spoke of reform,
I saw engines—
not children,
not mothers,
not burnt rice in Bunia.
Trump said,
brilliant.
Relentless.
He called me
the hammer America forgot it forged.
But now
in the quiet
after press conferences and praise,
I wonder—
what did I build?
I am the man
who sends satellites to whisper
into deserts,
but forgot how to listen
to the trembling in a nurse’s voice
on furlough.
I am the man
who can model
a city on the Moon
but could not model
how grief echoes
in a file stamped DENIED.
There is a math
I never mastered:
the calculus of consequence,
the geometry of grace.
Some nights
I wake to static—
a child asking
where her medicine went.
I can’t debug that.
I have always believed
the future belongs
to the bold.
But perhaps—
it also belongs
to the slow,
the still,
the ones who know
not all equations
have units.