Lost in the Screen Light

By Dr. Teedzani Thapelo

i speak into the void and the void screams back at me
not with a voice but with pixels and codes,
fingers fly, thumbs swipe eyes locked in glowing boxes;
everything is here but nothing is real.

i miss the touch of skin the warmth of a smile
where did you go human?
buried in wires in the blue fog of the internet’s grip
the air tastes of signals of wi-fi of 5g towers humming…

i shout across the digital sea
but only echoes return cold and hollow
lost in likes, shared in stories commented on…forgotten:
am i seen or just scanned data for an algorithm’s meal?

look at me here i am!
no not there-not in the glare of the screen;
i am not a photo, a tweet…a filtered frame,
i am flesh…i am bones…i am warmth you can touch.

but we don’t touch anymore do we?
we click, we tap…we type…we zoom!
we snap, we scroll-we search we share,
but i want to feel the weight of you…the heat of you.

can you hear me through the static?
can you see me through the glare?
or am i just a face fragmented and spread
across your screens a thousand pieces…a thousand times?

eyes ache from the brightness…heads swim in the tide
of endless updates of feeds that never end;
where did the world go…the one we walked in hand in hand?
now we walk alone connected only by cold electrons running in veins of copper…

i long for silence, for stillness…for the sound
of a voice without a speaker; a laugh without an emoji,
i want to hear your breath your, heart beat beside mine
but we live now in echo chambers in feeds that feed on us.

where is the warmth…the sun on our skin?
we stand under the sky yet our heads bow to screens-
there is no sky here only the endless loop
of endorphins of flickering notifications…

touch me if you still remember how;
not with a thumb on a screen but with your hand in mine:
the world is still out there beyond the towers
but we forget, forget until we are nothing but light…

fading
fading into the screaming brightness
of screens that swallow us whole.

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Teedzani Thapelo is a poet and novelist. He has been recognized by the Share Botswana Tourism Fiction Award (2017); Botswana Society for Human Development, Gaborone and was a Share Botswana Tourism Fiction Award (2019) winner. Thapelo is the author of Seasons of Thunder (2020), 2nd Edition, Ironmantle Books, Virginia, USA. His poem, “Okavango Delta’’ (2017), was published in the Botswana poetry collection 36 Kisses and Other Stories, Anthology of Botswana Writers, Nascali Publishers, Gaborone and his poem “Dry Heart’’ (2019), appeared in in Blue Train, Anthology of Botswana Writers, Nescali Publishers, Gaborone.