What the prime minister does
In her personal time
Is loud
It’s, above all else, loud
Primarily
That’s the most
We know of it
You probably came here
Expecting a list of things
A quirky, quaint list
Of this and that
And while it would make
For marvelous theater
Unfortunately
We have no idea what she does
Because she closes the door
And an hour goes by
And that’s the most of it
Aside from the noise
The noise varies in content
But never volume
And we can only guess
At what creates it
A book dropping
From a high, high height?
A hand
Slamming down
On a keyboard
Over and over again?
A shattered teacup
And the scramble
To clear its pieces away?
We don’t ask
It’s none of our business
And when we enter the room
After personal time has passed
All is as it should be
We exchange looks
Amongst ourselves
But to the prime minister
We only smile
And carry on with our notes
This meeting
That meeting
Scan the room for a teacup shard
Find nothing
Carry on
The rug sometimes appears askew
And every so often, she’ll have a thin line of blood
Running down her nostril
But of course
Once we point it out
She quickly dabs it away
But never apologizes
Her personal time
Is kept
To a strict
Sixty minutes
And not one second over
That is not our edict
If it were up to us
She would be allowed
All the time in the world
To relax and unwind
She works harder
Than any prime minister
Or politician
Any of us
Have ever known
And all of us worry in our hearts
That this much strain
Is wearing her thin
Everyday we hope her hour of personal time
Will be a quiet and reflective one
Not for the sake of our hearing
But because we can’t imagine anything positive
Is coming out of all that noise
A smash
A screech
Not human
But metal
Never any crying
Don’t let your mind wander there
Our prime minister
Is not some woman
On the verge
Of a breakdown
She’s more frustrated than anything
And we don’t blame her
Constant obstruction
Never-ending thinly veiled sexism
Articles upon articles all about
A blue evening gown
She wore to a hospital fundraiser
And whether or not
It was too revealing
So much wasted time
With so many important things
To accomplish
Given the choice
She’d probably give up that hour
And all her other hours
Spent doing things
Like sleeping and eating
So she could focus solely
On the problems of the day
Even then she’d be stymied
By the inaction of others
So it stands to reason
That her personal time
Is most likely spent
Throwing things across a room
In anguish
And then quietly cleaning up the mess
Come to think of it
There might be no better explanation
Of how a good leader
Spends their time
Spending as little time as possible
On the personal
And still finding
That there's never enough left over
For everything else
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