What happened before technology seeped into our brains and hardened our skin till it gleamed silver? Before eyes were dulled by commands, and minds were kept only to serve strict lines of code.
Our individuality flew off and diversity soon after. Birth on conveyor belts and death by recall. We were mere numbers that had the misfortune of knowing each other outside our six digit labels.

Innocent like two newborn lambs, you took my hands in yours and we waltzed, the harsh lights above bleaching our skin.

Remember, when we held hands under the artificial stars, our hearts synchronized as one?

Despite our binary world, I found love, and I loved you.
And in that moment I knew I was not a manufacturing mistake, but rather a human instead.
I shouldn’t have realized. Humans are dangerous, flawed creatures. It’s better to feel nothing at all than to hurt.

They knew us by our numbers. Outliers in the neat data of citizens. We fell outside their bell-shaped curve.

Like lambs to the slaughter, we did not know they needed a reason to end our flawed existence. My love for you was reason enough to condemn both of us. How human is it to have the ability to bestow affection upon others? They couldn’t understand how our minds had the capacities for unknown factors.

Clasping my hands, you told me that my feelings were a fleeting beauty in our ordered world. They found us. You sacrificed yourself, and I ran.

Now my mechanical heart aches.
I shouldn’t feel pain. My DNA is code; my skin is steel.

Variable X injected into oil veins. Cogito ergo sum.
But I don’t want to think. I don’t want to feel. I want to be the same black and white person I was before.

Before you.