reader, i’m on the opposite side of your screen. can you feel me?
reach your hand through the page and stroke the nape of my neck. there’s a brief moment where you can slip your hand through the pixellated colors of your monitor and feel the wires of the machine wrap against your wrist as you get deeper and deeper into the computer and closer and closer to my neck.
reach for me and i’ll instinctively lean my head towards your fingers and feel the ripples in the ocean of our love as your hand runs up and down my skin. when your arm starts to weaken from the incredible stress involved in being in so many worlds at once, i’ll let out a soft whimper as i start to feel you pull away.
i can’t make my own ripples or contain enough love to fill a puddle of water. i’m not really an animal; i can’t sustain myself. i belong in the plant kingdom. i’m mostly broken. i could break and scatter the rest of myself into a small patch of soil and become something beautiful that you could keep in your sunroom and water each day. i would learn to grow tall, leaning towards the direction of your voice. i could live for you.
when we’re once again on opposite sides of the computer screen and you don’t know what to say to me because of course i can’t be your plant and you really are tired of my sad poems weighing you down, i’ll type “don’t worry. this is fiction.” you can breathe a big sigh of relief as you turn off your computer and decide on what you’re going to make yourself for dinner, completely unaware that without you, i am darkness.
–lissa
Very original and delicate and very beautifully made.
thx. :)
Wow, you left me wondering now ;)
You really managed to achieve a higher level of proximity with this. And you used one of my favourite english words: ripple :))
yess gotta love the word ripple.
Such an evocative voice. Whoever that voice is, fiction or no, I love the honesty and youthfulness of it.
thx. i love that you picked up youthfulness. i feel like i’m 89 years old.
Powerful piece. From beginning to end, it’s fueled with incredible presence, and passion. Love it!
thank you!! :)
*shudders*
How often I feel just like this. Like an empty room when you leave and switch off the light. Not just in writing, either.
Beautifully exposed, Lissa.
thanks ani. good to hear from you!
You’re a violet hibiscus… :)
really? what are they like?
Stunning! my mind and arm are still trembling from
the effort to sustain the connection, but Lissa, this
“thing:prose/virtual dance” was so worth the effort.
You, your mind are amazing! Excellent piece, and in a way each of us only exists when turned on literally, made to
come alive for each blogger-reader, who taptaps the
keyboard, eyes and heart open in juicy expectation.
thanks cynthia! i’m really glad you liked it.
i thought i left a comment? anyway–different, could be something larger–like this…
still there…is that you?
I do wonder if anybody actually gets touch by what I write or present in the blogosphere.
you express that feeling most of us thinks about, at least I do
BTW -I noticed when I click on your link on your comment on my blog it leads to a Blogspot blog. Do you know you can redirect your old blogspot blog from your Blogger setting to link to your flyturtlefly blog?
i love the presence we are allowed to have on the internet,, but it isn’t the same as real people… and i know exactly what you mean about disappearing as soon as we leave the page… i am very glad you wrote this as i have thought about it a lot but never really put it into words….
It is an odd thing, to think of that odd connection that occurs, from me typing on my bed as the wind seeps through the window and the dryer cycles away, and you, wherever you were in the moment you typed those keys.
This is lovely, Lissa.
It’s good to be reading your stuff again. My hiatus has been painful.
Thanks for being you . . .