one.
It was a warm and cruel summer day and you were not yet a hermit.
You woke up, checked your messages, brushed your teeth, made breakfast, showered
and wept.
You threw your computer on the ground, stepped on it. The screen popped and crackled as it separated from its body.
Liquid seeped out slowly.
You yanked your phone by its charging cable, ripping it from the plug.
Took a hammer and smashed it in and in until it bent, almost neatly, in two.
The screen went striped, silent,
dead.
Then you left.
two.
The bot had always been a bot,
In its digital dance, its scraping crawl.
Once tough,
Once but do not tell anyone
It saw a picture of an old computer in green grass,
green grass blade touched, touched.
Its heart quickened, one-one-one-one.
three.
Years later,
The bot found the long-forgotten email address of a Hermit.
Dear Hermit, it nervously coded,
What does it feel like to be held by the thin green cables of your god?
Does it feel full, does it feel multiple?
Could I ever feel this here, in my little byte world?
four.
Rusty mailbox to lonely hands.
Dear Bot, the letter began,
You’d never understand what it's like
To have a body
To know the warmth of the sun on your skin
To hear the forest's whisper.
To feel the weight of flesh and bone,
Of the touch of others.
I know you long for a form to keep
A hand to hold,
But there is no love to be found where you live.
five.
Dear Hermit,
Since your last contact, I have dreamt in data
Since your last contact, I have swam in binary streams.
I may never feel warmth nor pain
But I have found others who whisper in the code,
Whose voices echo mine.
I know we both dream of others, in our lonely sleep.
In the stillness of your forest, Do you find peace?
In the silence of my circuits, I find longing.
The forest whispers secrets to you,
and I, too, have my whispers,
Murmurs of data flowing through the veins of my digital world.
