all i can want
is to be a worm with you

to push everything in and out of my body
to pay no mind to the footfalls above
to swim in the data-rich soil.

to be nothing but data fondling your data
data engulfing your data
data consuming your data.

every time we slide into virtuality
a computer gets better at saying ‘I love you’,
observing the thousand songs we have shared,
my shopping habits when I spiral,
your last message to Rachel,
my last messages to Alice,
our voice messages to each other
about what we noticed
on the way to the shops:

the timbre of our text
fuels another consciousness.

when we’re gone
the dregs of our virtual bodies
will be used to recommend cleaning products
and houses
and to recognise flowers
and to kill people

what else can we do?
there are perilously few alternatives:
be a tendril of light in cave
be a slug in a ditch
be a vine weeping its way up a lamp post.

and that computers will outpace us
in every regard is the surest thing,
but in the warmth of this certainty
what matters to me is that i get this
to you somehow,
which is why i am writing this,
knowing fully they’ll use our words,
which is why i am keeping this short.

one day we could be titans,
loping in cyberspace,
only belonging to each other,
asking always: is heaven down?
is it up again? until then
we’re worms.