karkat is dead

digital availability
   around the clock
after a while
begins to feel like
permanent responsibility

your friends expect you
to be online all the time
    whether you like it or not
so they can share with you their daily trivia
of personal condition, discount shopping, their dog’s health,
the children’s good, their problems with their partners,
etcetera etcetera

I know it’s nice to hit a button
and hear the ringing of the other’s phone
the voice responding to your call

it’s fine when there are no alternatives

and yet

somehow the electronic chat
confirms more than redeems
presence of absence of the person

I feel like talking to an avatar
a disembodied voice
that has a virtual existence
yet whose life in the real world
still needs to be asserted
by meeting – and talking –
in a café
or simply on the street

anxiety
it first arrives like a tide, lightly gliding over you,
but then it surrounds you. it engulfs you.
for it is no longer a tide, but a hurricane.
and then the first wave comes crashing down, sending you tumbling.
and you can't breath, you can do nothing but sit and wait for it to end
because you can't stop the ocean. you can't stop a hurricane from hitting.