I Used To Be Good At This

Fifteen years to learn the shape of it.

The way

a system wants to fit.

I could hold a codebase in my head,

every branch, every thread.

I knew the smell of a bad abstraction.

I knew when to wait and when to action.

I earned that.

Slowly.

Line by line.

Every scar on this was mine.

I used to be

good at this

I used to be

good at this

I still know what good looks like I just don't make it

anymore

Now I describe it and it appears.

Better than mine.

In under a minute.

In arrears

of everything it took me to be able

to know that what it made was stable.

Here's the part I can't explain to anyone.

It is better than me.

And I can still tell that it's better than me.

And that is the only skill I have left.

And it is the one that hurts.

I used to be

good at this

I used to be

good at this

I still know what good looks like I just don't make it

anymore

I used to be

good at this.