Messaging the dead
       

I watch as the cursor glides across the screen
captured in a chat box, hesitating as in life,
or maybe it's just harder to get the Internet
where the dead are. They take turns typing
cryptic messages asking where I am, what
am I wearing, why did I talk more to her
instead of him. They use acronyms of texting
because each letter travels so far from
echoing minds to my nervous eyeballs.
They always pass the Turing test in triplicate.
When I ask how it is over there they evade
comparison: "unspeakable" "indescribable"
"neither hot nor cold, really." The dead
always miss me, but I am just another cursor
in the end, I could be anyone over here,
alive and well, trying to capture their footprints
as they try to capture mine. We cannot touch.
We think we understand. We type and type
worried to find that each has been talking
like the skim of a Ouija board's glide
only to our own twitches and fears
all this time.

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Copyright © 2022 Betsy Aoki All rights reserved
from Breakpoint
Tebot Bach
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission