a memory—

his face

frozen

into bits of digital pixels

and encrypted code

a trail of messages

the voices of former classmates

old acquaintances

imprinted permanently

into this vast artificial reality

a yearbook we will all abandon

eventually

but his memory—

his face

frozen

deleted

too early

too late

*a student from my college died in a fire two days ago. i found out yesterday that i actually had a class with him. i saw his picture on facebook and read a few of the messages that people had left him. this poem is what came out. it's not much, but it seemed to be the only way I could describe the moment when i realized how preserved his life is going to be even if it's in some synthetic way. the internet and all these online blogs and networks--it's not quite real. not quite concrete. and you can't ever measure a life through this type of medium, but what if that's all that's left of you?