The screen glows blue at three a.m.
No fish here. Only numbers.
The joints are good but they crack
when I stand from the desk chair.

My father was ancient at thirty-four.
I refresh the feed. The children I knew
are senators now. Or dead.
Both are equally impossible.

The room is dark and cool and empty.
Notifications ripple the surface,
Each ping a silver flash below,
Like small fish testing the line.

My hands are strong. The tendons work.
But the thumb aches from scrolling,
the way an old fisherman's would from years
of reading depth in empty water.

The coffee is black and good and hot.
The monitor hums like distant surf.
Time moves differently in this salt-less sea,
Where we cast our nets of light.

The great fish of youth sounds somewhere deep.
I know it's there. I feel it move.
But my bait grows stranger by the hour,
And the waters keep getting darker.

The young ones speak in glowing signs.
Their words swim swift and strange and new.
I drift here in my little boat of light,
Too tired to shore, too awake to drown.