Let’s reinvent digital love, eliminate names
from our histories until we can’t search
for anything except each other.
Our avatars met at a freefall punk show,
unsanctioned sounds amplifying an atmosphere
while we moshed like pinballs among endless mist.
For dates we floated into 3D art show renders,
copyrights be damned, superimposed
our interpretations atop canvas.
We tested full-body emotes, slept inside
ethical hacker dens with tie-die collaborations
and joined a hundred causes each coding session.
We flirted between neon-clad streets, alive
with nothing but promises of impossible
futures and stained river walks
where we dropped glow bricks,
watching them brighten pessimistic
coasts and then degrade into data chum.
Our personas broke into encrypted libraries
to uncover banned Kamasutra sequels
melting into silhouettes of words
and blended watercolor sleeves.
Let’s rediscover physical love, splice
a scheme for our flesh to meet, do it all again.
Casey Aimer is a cyberpunk poet and editor who holds master’s degrees in both poetry and publishing. He works for a non-profit publishing science research articles and is founder of Radon Journal, an anarchist science fiction semiprozine. His poetry has been featured in Strange Horizons, Space and Time Magazine, Apparition Lit, Star*Line, and many more. An SFWA and SFPA member, his work has been a Rhysling Award finalist and Soft Star Magazine contest winner. He can be found on Bluesky @caseyaimer.bsky.social and at CaseyAimer.com.
