It’s been over a decade since since I spilled my guts and sorted out my insides, carefully reading the tea leaves of my best intentions, since I watched reruns of the days I didn’t live up to them.

As I weigh a heavy heart and count the new bruises dealt from the gut punches I often deserved, I wonder if I can still do this. I wonder if my tongue can still untie the knots in my stomach, or have years pulled them too tight to unravel.

Did I lose the plot, as the years dripped down a shrinking candle, can I still find a punch line? Or has the medicated shades of grey that have begun to line my temple left me a ruin of private YouTube videos no one has seen is years.

They are grainy and out of focus, like brain fog rolling over memories, they are an echo of who I was, reverberating in 540p off the walls a server farm running hot. A few megabytes behind blinking lights stored next to cries for help disguised as shopping hauls and nostalgic myspace deep dives teaching the basics of html as a coping mechanism for my young suicidal ideation.

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A janitor plays her keys to the rhythm of a sea dead pixels shimmering against a dark concrete floor like link-in-the-bio-luminescence, grateful for the company’s 401k. Her future lights up like LEDs, she gonna be alright.

Outback, a technician chain smokes while swiping through smoke shows, softly held by the warm walls next to an unmarked door, a spark glows in his hands, first faint, then burning hot. Tonight’s glowing with potential.

Just two star-crossed chatbots reciting the best lines from The Days of Our Lives while exchanging love notes in binary.

The janitor’s phone buzzes as she wipes the dust from the hard drives that hold the shattered glass reflections of the pieces of who were in 2010, cheering us on.

She’s got a match, but gotta act quickly before it burns out or burns her up. Her dreams stored on these hard drives, and the technician can fix every misconnection, but his own.

In morse code, my shadow super-likes the tension.

In caffeine green, spinning discs dance to a new song played off key.

The technician reformatted my aging hardware, and it seems like I got still got soft software. Even if I lost some blood through the bytes of the last decade, Maybe they were just the refactor I needed.

As the janitor wipes the dust from my eyes, I realize I just needed some space anyways.