My friends and I witnessed
the birth of the Internet, a crowd
that gathers to watch a building
implode downtown; close enough to see it,
far enough away to forget something’s gone.
At once we opened windows into our bedrooms.
Everything seemed to take
a great deal of time. Everything
was loaded. It wasn’t utility,
it was feeding off someone else
who loved your celebrities
and lost sleep at night.
In this way, we’ve stayed young.
We kept ourselves alive
on vanity alone.
The right selfie outlasts
the self. What have men
been to me? An eye. A lid.
For insurance purposes,
my office has windows that
don’t open, but I set pink oaks
as my background. I study a diagram
of leaves. A tree grows on display
in the lobby. My business trips
land mostly in airports. I recharge
terminally in buildings named
after people and their places,
but they aren’t quite anywhere.