He’s offline.
There I sat,
in front of a paper-thin Macbook Air
blinking drily at two words,
his name.
Offline.

I am mesmerized by the space next to his name,
an everlasting blankness, flickering within itself like
my emotions that zip around like the spastic cursor trails,
they hypnotize me into a vortex that spits me back into the façade of reality.
I suppose we are still special “friends” online,
but we are never online at the same time
I hold no grudges, but I need to let it go.
The expectations are too heavy.
I can't maintain this anymore,
I give up.
And no matter what, I vow,
I will never go back.

But I still love him
and he loves me, I think.
Perhaps I shouldn’t do this.
My mouse hovers over the red x.
but it slowly slips away…
and there his name is again, floating in front of my eyes…
he’s offline.
And suddenly the curves of his typed name
are a roller coaster,
and I am the car on the track,
reliving the bliss, the exhilaration,
the burden is forgotten and flung away,
out
with the speedy coaster car
and all the happiness
the silent smiles
shy talks
exhilaration,
excitement and adrenaline zipping through my hair
static electricity buzzing wildly
two pairs of hazel brown eyes staring, interlocked
above the heads of the crowd
it all comes back, and flung away,
out
with a flowing, trickling bead of memories
followed by another, then another,
and a single piece of waterfall rolls, then drops
and deposits little molecules of solute onto my face
and leaves behind mounds of drying crust
molding to the crevices and wrinkles of my skin
as mounds of my flesh twist and contract
in rasping spasms of agony and longing.

My mouse moves to hover over his name now,
tracks to bliss, nothingness, electricity, and unpredictable unreliability,
tracks that oscillate to the sky and back to the earth,
tracks that wind back to the very start,
tracing the curves of the black pixels.
But the pulses of pressure crash upon me again,
and my emoticon heart makes a mad dash to
the red ex, pulling the mouse cursor along.
My plastic chest explodes the screen with bands of color
twist, yank, crack, and
BADUM! the right click button slams down
with a final shatter of electricity, plastic, light, and metal…

I stand up,
just as the space next to his name winks
flickers
alight
shining
between pixels of war-frenzied colors
with a simple green dot.
He’s online.