When the screen goes dark
and the olives and carobs
in their intricate design
vanish into the sudden night
that falls like a butcher’s cleaver
in the stalls of the marketplace,
when the power goes
and the message I haven’t yet sent
for fear of your reply
is erased
as if wiped from the slate
when the lesson is done,
when a world ends,
even a little simulated world,
with a quick electric click
and an echoing clap of silence,
I grow virtual and disappear
like the Prophet in a movie scene
who cannot be represented,
like a user deprived of his apparatus,
like a man whose love has abandoned him.