Critics of the digital world claim
that real connections can't be made
via a computer screen.

And yet, isn't this connection
more real than all others,
having an actual physical presence
in the convulted network of wires
that leads from me to him,
a faceless name made real,
made close, by the words
he writes in pain,
the words I read,
feeling that same pain, for him?

I know nothing of his past, his friends,
his homelife, his job, his hobbies,
yet merely from the hopeless words
he has sent out into the void,
I have come to want to comfort him,
in whatever small way I can.

And I can, because here,
in the world of wires,
there are no social barriers to stop me.

In some ways, faceless communication
is more honest.
And more human.

10/29/2003

Author's Note: Very rough draft, first draft even. Just an idea I needed to get down. Not sure how it came out. Feedback?

Posted on 10/30/2003
Copyright © 2025 Amanda J Cobb