Like a good nephew, I save your computer

from the skip’s slew of lifelong wreckage,

lug its black lake-weight back to my room

even though the tower is now a humming grave.

Inside still live the pixel kids

you abandoned to a timeless

paradise, still frolicking poolside,

spouting gibberish, clownish, in a summer

that will never end. They know nothing

of the absent God act you’ve pulled, these tiny

Adams and Eves in cherry-print kaftans.

I feed and clothe and shower them, strange

skin cells you’ve shed in your swift exit,

my head haloed by the screen’s Heaven-

blue, the way yours must have been as you

crafted your craved reflection.

Here is the candy-haired

mohawk girl modelled on your ideal.

I push her around her little kitchen,

fingers lingering on the keys that yours

last touched. Her chip pan has caught fire.

The girl’s face bursts open with tears.

Scorched walls. Her kitchen is

ruined. I can’t console her.