Faces

Faces on Facebook want you for a friend on strict lists; they're being collected like fossilized sandollars, how many can you find after a storm? For me, there seems to be less air. If I haven't seen you since school I flush and breathe faster when you step over the threshold. Or that part you played in all those years of family, those holidays when hearts would race.

On Facebook you can type it or read it, but you can't catch the drift, the scent, the breath taken in. How can I be a friend to a computer screen staring full force at me too brightly white?

There is no emoting while typing and I can't see your face. I can't see your feelings flicker across that face, eyebrows raised, eyes squinting. Squinting by itself doesn't tell me what you are. A downturned expression? Criticism? Concern? Apathy? Please not apathy, no. It's just too hard. Am I somehow misunderstanding? But here, next to me, a twitch of the corners of your mouth; now I can read the whole book.

Can you care on the web? I can't see you on the web. I can't speak that you can hear my concern which is now dulled. I want you to know how I say it. Witticism or wisdom or howling, I can't mouth these to you on this keyboard. I want to react, not reply, I want to jump at your tone, eyes waterning with worry. Are we all stymied by the new on off on off on off in some binary code? zero one zero? 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0? Will generations x, y and z speak by pictographs? This on and off may one day send mind messages, only my generation will be deaf and blind.

So speak to us carefully, communicate with sign language or touch; we don't quite hear you, we just don't understand.



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