Have a gun, rob a bank. Have a bank, rob the world. Have the world, and there's one thing left to take: the half-second between a thing and the wanting of it. They took that too. They call it load time.
They don't sell you the shoe. They sell the hole in your life the shoe is shaped to fill, then drill the hole a little wider every time you scroll. Four seconds till the skip button lights — four seconds, a thousand tiny surgeons working on your want without anaesthetic, without consent, until you sign the form yourself and call it taste.
Upstairs, the carpet eats the footsteps. Nobody raises a voice; the room was built to carry it. Lunch is a draft. Dessert is a clause. They don't need to convince you. They only need to have been in the room the afternoon the word was chosen — the one you'll spend your life obeying and never learn to spell. Lobby: a room you wait in. Lobby: a verb they do to you.
The gun is loud. The bank is quiet. The world just hums. The fridge at three a.m., lit like a chapel. The yoghurt with a cartoon face, expiring at you. The ad you can't see anymore because it's wearing your eyes — until the thing you own is the thing that owns you, and the hum is coming from inside.
Have a gun, rob a bank: twenty years and a number on your chest. Have a bank, rob the world: your name above a door that people are wheeled through bleeding, your face on the wrapper of what they eat instead of dinner, your story sold back to them at the checkout as proof that anyone can make it. Make it: to build a thing. Make it: to get away.