You Didn't Imagine It: We Were Once Close

Holly Fortune Ratcliff

Poem

For several laughed-through hours, I waited beside you while Toontown installed—pacing, impatient, and in the exact right place together. We built gangly green and orange avatars to fish, to swim in tandem. Ultimately, to beat down Cogs.

I recall the fit of our hugs. Here are my instructions to yield similar results without you:

1. Seek out a beach.
2. Sprint to the water’s edge.
3. Drop to your knees.
4. Dig toward the current (don’t stop to breathe).
5. Continue until the ocean rushes IN then AT you.
6. Look back. Ask:

Are you, at present, a problem-solver that finds peace in repeated character dialogue? In truth, I only know that doll-within-doll-like version of you. There on the floor, you’d share your Nintendogs world with me: one xylophone-led labrador harmony after another. If prompted, could you teach me how to close today’s distance between us children turned women turned silent neighbors? My pixelated shetland slept soundly through 72 seasons, but it would only take a tap to wake her now.