behind the avatars

[ellajam]

Your inhumanely fat cat alternates between purring
in your lap and shredding the back of your swivel chair.
While you, typing clandestinely at work, snatch glances,
and busily erase browser histories each time you X out.
Not so you, lying in sweats on your bed, laptop balanced
with notebooks and wrappers and cans we imagine aren't full.
What about you, bleary, stumbling away to fetch a whining
baby, cooing as you pick out witticisms with one hand—

what shade of beige did your wife pick out for those walls?
Are your sheets chartreuse or charcoal,
and are you in a high rise or in your mother’s basement?
Is your cubicle filled with shot glasses from Disneyland,
or kindergarten finger paintings from your ex’s kid?
Does that cat grow fat from eating flouted leftovers,
or do you feed him like that from pity?

This is so nicely done. Each thumbnail has just the right amount of detail to spark the imagination. This highlights what for me is a lot of the appeal of online communication, friendships in the dark.

Thanks for posting it, well done.