you meet him somewhere online . honey dripping fingertips he’sblue light just images embedded in viscous heavy blocks of code months and years of numbers captions icons wandering across your screen

// social media is so exhausting don’t you think
// where’s the ctrl the emoji says winking at you
all algorithms these days stumbling through your words.
he speaks confidently in that elastic summer voice wonder sometimes if he’s just an amalgam
of ideas lashed together. a few wordless beautiful colorful squares wings and claws a
tail(?) whips by you almost cuts you in half need to pay more attention to your surroundings. wish you

could tap on his shoulder and ask (what’s really in there? Where did you grow up? how did you choose your name? What songs do you listen to when you’re working?) but for now you’re

focused sitting on the floor piecing together a scarecrow vision of yourself in monospace verse. yeah we're fine. yes i'm eating enough. yes i will. no nothing
too serious the telephone's coiled white cable straining

as some kind of raw wound a gash of jpeg compression and aliasing You dream he’s looping one Markup arm around you his voice bitcrushed, tinny speaker hollowed
music

like what a spider builds? why's it called that you hear yourself from far away speaking into the clear plastic mat on the floor under the inky rolling office chair ozone smell

it's getting cleaner, neater, it works better it breaks less
to build a picture for you, ley lines in terminal
a room full of overpowering noise and open windowed heat and everyone you know

// waiting patiently (not so patiently)
// in a row of circular icons
to that glittering streetlight window firm relief halo light against
the curve of his neck in the warm
foggy room

The laptop is quite a beautiful tool—it can do so much and weighs very little.
The elegant machined aluminum is pleasantly cool to the touch.

a second to breathe bending elastic in half in your lower back to cry over some Wikipedia article oh
here
a moment of lucidity razor bladed in white sheets we only need to make the city a bit smaller

wouldn't you rather be safe in hypertext? isn't it
better than the dirt under your fingernails grass stains on your jeans better than pain
or pleasure or the
frayed edge of your ex-lover’s t-shirt isn’t this better than the wind teasing your hair better than that one sunset you saw walking to the train station in the middle of summer when it was so hot? better than his gentle pinprick against your skin better than a scraped knee better than music so loud you can’t hear what the person beside you is saying supersaw directly into your ear better than waking from another dream in sweat-drenched sheets better than the smell of freshly peeled orange on your fingers better than acrid smoke, ash on the bathroom windowsill better than a hurricane, than ultramarine blue dripping onto plywood, isn’t this better than tapwater in your palms, salt spray stinging your eyes, colorful plastic charms rattling, isn’t this better than today?
tomorrow? yesterday? no yeah It’s not of course it’s not
but isn’t it

beautiful anyways Can’t we live here for a minute together? is this fantasy so bad? Doesn’t this place feel good in between anything physical in seven nanometer process aren’t I beautiful in smeared pixels? Doesn’t
the screen sometimes
shine like starlight