My deepest hope is to ascend to the level of the asterisk
to be stampeded with ink when I die,
so much so, that no page may forgive me,
for the violence I commit on ivory, yellow white
a flourishing spoke wheel,
serving no greater purpose than to cartwheel
across the screen, right past the cursor
and into the highlighted void
I am, I will be unapologetic about my typewriter theatrics,
I will be a generator of actions,
an emote to dead words,
abandoned by the smileys they invoke
I will be a hanging breath, a thought emphasized,
a St. Catherine’s wheel for the unsaid
suffering in the potential, of the absence of the said
really does bring out the best of the machines
so the asterisk says it all,
encompasses my spirit in a simple bloom
it is all my chaos hidden in the keyboard’s vault of symbols
no one really knows how to use
this is how I see myself
cumbersome, but small, easy to ignore
but always recognized, when seen, as a pause
that delayed introspection before a click
that never takes off
a dead man’s landing strip.Rachel Ford, January 2015
