I open the lid on my laptop
Pulling it wide, wider, until it's just perfect.
It whirrs to life, clicking, buzzing, and it displays my Desktop
An empty space full of nothing but cold and loneliness.
And little white dots representing the peak of the world.
A speckle of life, like a star bright in daylit skies.
And I feel a need course through my body
I stared at it, a form of imprisonment.
My arm reaches into the screen, and feels around the inside.
It's cold, like a real void would be
As it tugged on my hand, reeling me in like a fish, I held a firm stance
An expanse of everything, a window away
And my eyes widened, as ideas flooded my head.

​

I search for images of Cats, and Water, and Grass.
Images of the Sun.
And run my hand over them, into them.
And I can feel their soft fur, and damp waves, smoothness.
I can feel their warmth.
And I try to pull them out to my real world. My realer world.
Freeing them of their realm, a realm forced to dance. Like a clown.
But the water evaporates into nonexistance.
The grass browns, dying, disintegrating, and crumbles to a number of zero
And the sun leaves a freezing absence in my room.

​

When I excitedly try to feel more pictures, more things of someone else's,
I accidentally run the mouse into my ethereal hand
It tickles, and feels good for I keep doing it.
Poking my hand with the mouse, over and over. Harder and faster
My lungs feel like everything, anything, is inside them, yet they breathe still.
And when I still push my cursor onto my skin, something snaps. And I gasp.
The mouse has entered my hand. Piercing through it, like a bullet.
I should hurt, but don't. I just feel it, a consequence of my actions
But when I try to pull it out, waiting to stitch up it's wounds, it can't escape
Before my brain processes it, I tug. And tug and tug but I can't budge.
For a cursor is not a thing of the real world. My world. Like a chain.
I try moving the computer with my free hand, and it's stuck too. As if glued to the table.
My arm reels back one more time, and finally is free, back into my slice of reality.

​

And then I notice a sensation in my limb, as I notice a huge gash in my hand.
A wide, fleshy cut, running from the middle of my palm
to the in-between my index and middle finger.
On the screen, the mouse now lies bloodied, with my dying skin draped over it.
As I lay, bleeding, eyes shifting between my pain and my laptop
And as the computer sits, running out of battery
It threatens to delete part of me forever.