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Waiting

This poem portrays the anxieties of aging and daily life through the very ordinary subject of a toilet.
It quietly questions the fragility of a modern society dependent on convenience, while revealing how deeply the security of bodily functions is tied to human dignity for the elderly.
Beginning with the frustration of waiting for repairs, the poem gradually expands into a critique of consumerism and a disposable civilization, reflecting the poet’s distinctive social perspective.


Waiting

The toilet broke down.
There was no repair part available,
so it had to be ordered from the manufacturer.
Even after a week, it still had not arrived.
Even shipments from the mainland usually come in two or three days.
What an astonishingly sluggish response.

One of the three comforts—
eating well, sleeping well, and relieving oneself well—falls apart.
When one collapses, the other two are shaken as well.
For the elderly, harsh trials continue.
Fear of accidents discourages going outside.
Even leakage pads cannot be abandoned.
Life begins to revolve around bowel movements.

The guarantee of peace of mind
lies in controlling bodily functions.
Constipation deepens discomfort.
Even eating less cannot stop frequent urination
from disturbing sleep.
Something as ordinary as a toilet
becomes inconvenient because of a single missing part.
When the electronic functions fail,
it becomes nothing more than an ornament.
The irritation grows
when repairs cannot be made immediately.

For the elderly,
those three comforts are the true barometer of daily life.
Perhaps replacing it entirely
would have been faster.
But what torments one most
is realizing the body no longer moves as it once did.
That makes toilet troubles all the more unbearable.
Can this convenient lifestyle
really continue forever?
Even the aging sewer pipes ahead
become another source of anxiety.

Society kept pursuing convenience
and devoted itself to developing new products.
The age of mass production, mass consumption,
and mass disposal continues.
This whole toilet unit, too,
will soon be thrown away.
One imagines a gigantic pit
swallowing endless waste.
Even spent nuclear fuel, perhaps someday,
will be discarded beyond the Earth.
When will the social systems
that sustain our instinct to survive finally collapse?
Well then—
for now, let us simply wait for the part to arrive.

Written on May 23, 2026.
A story told by a friend.
Conversations about toilets can become surprisingly profound.

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