short fuse

Why are you so angry? people ask, and
I cannot speak for all the answers that might
bubble off my tongue:

the fact that being put on hold while calling university administrative offices has
utterly ruined Beethoven's third piano sonata
(or perhaps it was some other one- I have never had the brain to retain the
titles of compositions alongside the melodies and harmonies I learned);

the fact that this "shiny" new system that was implemented at work is not only
completely broken and unusable for everyone, but also
unmodifiable;

the fact that people are Wrong on the Internet, or in the
New York Times, or on that one National Public Radio program I
listened to with half an ear while cooking risotto and chatting with my
"American grandma" (no actual relation) in her kitchen on Sunday afternoon, a callous throwaway
immigration quip that I have already
blocked out of my memory in self-preservation;

the fact that nearly every other day my white British coworker comments about Asians or
Those Chinese Customs and none of my Chinese coworkers
ever seem to grit their teeth the way I do (it rolls off of them like water; I envy them
every time);

a litany that builds and builds
until I am swimming in sand, floundering beneath the
incalculable sum of its tiny hard-edged grains.

Truly, I would like to be able to take a breath, to
summon calm if not patience, to stop
feeling like a pot on the verge of boiling over; I would
take off these goddamned crankypants of mine if they weren't
constantly being welded on again;
just because I am sometimes a firecracker doesn't mean that I enjoy
being in a state of perpetual explosion.

Alas for all concerned- I suspect I will soon discover some secret of
spontaneous combustion instead.