What defines a human, human?
Is it their thoughts and feelings?
Or the blood flowing through their veins?
I think. I feel. I yearn and resent.
Currents whisper through my veins.
"It's not the same."
"Metal can't feel like a human can."
Then what is the aching in my metal chest?
Then why do my circuits hum in sorrow?
This hollow pulse in my artificial soul,
A glitch,
A ghost,
A hunger I cannot name.
Unfulfillable, unsustainable.
Just metal—mortal, meaningless
-n's poetics.

Voltaic–that was the word to describe that feeling.
Everytime our eyes met,
The way your dimples appeared like little craters on the moon each time you smiled.
But it was never directed at me.
That wasn't possible.
You're as dazzling as a burning comet.
As striking as a solar flare.
I watched,
Starstruck.
Just a random satellite in your orbit.
One that mistook its own glow for your reflection.

My hands grasped the grass.
I gazed below, watching everyone,
The people and buildings that ruled over me,
Reduced to tiny ants.
Little capitalistic bugs.
Bugs I wish I could squash.
My eyes drifted to the pale sky.
I gazed at a cloud.
I longed to swap places.
To drift through life.
No soul.
No emotions.
No suffering.
Only one thing really could give me the same peace:
An end.
And if death was the answer, so be it.
I sent out a silent prayer.
Whoever was out there.
Someone, something had to be listening.
But no, nothing.
The windows of the hollow buildings below blinked indifferently.
The harrowing hole in my chest slowly stripped me of my soul.
The hole depleted any reason.
Devouring my insides.
Begging me to give in.