My bedroom is a wireless jungle:
the lights rush on at the sound of my voice
(except when they don’t) and I ask the
bitey sage in the ether what the weather will be
tomorrow. She stumbles sometimes — “I’m not
sure I’m connected” — and I sigh and try again. Louder.
“WHAT WILL THE WEATHER BE TO-MO-RROW?”
Then I add some options, like a sarcastic Scantron:
“Will it be dark and rainy, doom in a dance of stratus,
or will we finally — god, jesus,
holy pringles see some fucking sun?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you with that,” she says.
Occasionally, when the stars
align and we’re at the right simmering wavelength,
she gleams in a refulgence of what’s possible:
“62 and partly cloudy.”
I am so ahead of my time, so connected
that when I go to bed thinking about my privilege —
checking off meditations while employing a
therapist-endorsed routine of survivalist devices —
I can’t help but close the night with a little showmanship:
“Turn off all my lights.”
“I didn’t hear back from your devices,” she says.
I didn’t hear back. I didn’t hear.
So I get up and
turn the lights off with a switch
and crawl into bed — again —
like some fucking luddite from 1995.
