Blue Screen

I have been thinking that I could find you in the coded ether—  That you have been fragmented into bits and blips,  scattered across years of digital history.

I am like an archeologist excavating the data, 

A historian piecing together you,  A cartographer drawing lines through the entries left behind.  Every inconsequential keystroke,  every pixel one more tiny piece I steal back from the–  Wherever.   
All of it is you –   yet you are not.  
We scattered you in the wind—  like a snow crash  an entire system torn apart by the incurable virus of life.  
I had been thinking that I could find you.

~~~~~~

I recently rediscovered that I had access to my sister's Livejournal. Well, the bits that she granted me access too many years before she herself left it behind.

I think a lot about the whole "death of the author" thing and how it relates to some of the things I write. I think about what it would look like if anyone was to explicate any of the poetry I bravely share with the world--- and I think about what the "world" means to me now as a human who had the experience of both not having, and having the digital space to one day leave behind.

Happy Birthday To My Half-Life Counter Part

I have been thinking about you a lot. I think about a reality where I could open an MSN chat window and talk to you across time. Thirty-two year old me wants to tell sixteen year old you everything I know, and thirty-two year old me wants to hear sixteen year old you tell me just how wrong I am and how you’ll prove it so.

I see you in my eyes mostly. Because they were your eyes once, and I want to remember how it was you saw everything. I want to remember and feel the way you felt when you sat down every single day to ramble your thoughts away to the beat of the blinking cursor and all that J-Pop.

I feel your back pressed against mine and it’s strange how we are the same but somehow you were smaller. You were so strong from all the hours of dancing, and I am strong because I had to learn to put in the work. I am strong because we still day dream about being a sci-fi hero wielding our fists, out flying our squadron mates and cutting everyone down with the sharpest tongue the backwaters has ever heard.

I found you in a stack of faded pages. Embossed with angry ink from rage I can no longer comprehend. Some pages are crispy from dried tears and it’s a little funny to me that you have no idea how many more were to come; I want to warn you that tears come for many worse reasons than you had faced up until then.

You are me but I will never get to be you. I just wanted to tell you how much I love you and all your silly banter. That I look up to you sixteen years later. You didn’t know it then, but you know it now - you are the hero in the story; you are the survivor of our wreckage. Thank you for being you and thank you for allowing you to become me.