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(First published in Illumen)

In our collective online headspace

first there was a sprout

then the growing pains of love;

the forums stretching and shooting up

like weeds, DMs acquiring stretchmarks

as they contorted into group chats to fit all:

Cassandra and Ivy and Amir and I.

I sent them pixelated roses,

asked them to imagine the thorned stem

between my teeth. The goosebumps

spreading down the body

whose code I wished I could rewrite,

rearrange, like this flesh of mine was mere

foam.

Cassandra liked to cast amorous spells.

Her ingredients megabytes, artistic nudes,

dashes of pink pepper and red lipstick.

Ivy, true to her name, clung

to the group chat at all hours with tendrils

of cursive, colorful fonts, love

songs and late-night ramblings.

Amir messaged us one day to say

they’d found the secret to solve all

our long distance problems:

A hack; a cheatcode; a drug; a revelation

that would allow us to feel each other

from across the globe

uploading our consciousness to the net

acquiring temporary bodies of binary code.

Into the spiderwebs we four fell

going deeper, cicadas in the soil;

going darker, and suddenly we learned

what bats feel like hearing shapes,

what plants feel like devouring sunlight.

I stared wondering, would we ever stop falling

deep and dark enough to forget our way back

through these complex canals?

Did we even want to stop?

Now, digital domestic [ignorance is] bliss.

Now, we all float exultant in our freefall;

Cassandra and Ivy and Amir and I.