Remember when laughter blossomed from our cheeks every-time
I told a joke,
your hand waved
like a giggled diving board suggested
I to continue.
Glanced at your topaz eyes
I floated in ice-cream truck music,
every moment you spoke.


Then
we bought cell phones.

Renegotiated with tooth fairy
handfuls of pearly white teeth

in exchange for Bluetooth’s. Spent
Sunday’s church service in bathrooms, perfected voice-mails,
often carried away by new ringtones.

fingers adopted mouths
we stripped alphabet from books
and formed qwerty keyboards.
My hands danced on bubble wrap as I,
LOL.


we are secretary mimes,
fingertips scaled through mountains
the way chills do when you texted me.


Fatigue from armchair Surfs,
I wanted to see you, needed to hear you,
Panicked, I couldn't digitized a hug
Instead I poked you like a broken doorbell on Facebook.


Kissed by Instant message,
On our first date
We watched YouTube cinema
and ate spam for supper.
Two weeks later, you told me you loved me


by webcam.


We changed our relationship status to married,
tweeted "I Do's"
and wrote love notes in blogs.

I felt safer. beyond chat rooms are terrors
that firewalls couldn't conceal.

your face clothed in disgust at the
ugly hues of skin lack of sunlight spawns,
shattered disappointment when jokes aren’t as funny
abnormal gestures and behaviors none would've known,
if we stayed inside, heart malfunctions
when "I Love you" doesn't sound as good in person.
Thank god for Norton’s security.


But
after ritual massage from armchair
I computerized into my online avatar, our hearts
eroded with every email, burst like a boiled cup
of computer chips, slipped beneath chest to belly,
Festered into smoldered orb
resembled gray sphere beneath mouse.
We lost sweetheart, fallen
to convenience
Happiness triggered by mouse clicks
Our voices, afraid to be heard, hid
in throat-bunkers,
Downsized to only one hundred-sixty characters
For the sake of humanity,
Stop using parenthesis and semi-colons to imitate smiles.

We
every click and tap, muffled our laughter
into mere vibrations
technology became terrorists of hearts and fingers,
DNA deciphered in zeros and ones
Playgrounds and classrooms
replaced by PCs.


In a few years
we'll plug husk bodies into modems,
craft adapters, specialized accessories
to compensate for the lack of love and realism


Need to be human.