y2k

In my grandmother's house is a sacred space

beyond the kitchen, down hallway thick-carpeted,

past walls of textured paper over concrete

that will outlast us all. The office is

a cube no longer than me, one wall mirrored,

one lined with books. A small window

always hidden behind dusted blue curtains.

A corner desk, computer updated every few years,

only evidence time didn't stop around 2004

when the Internet consumed us all.

I settle in the cushioned chair and feel like God,

at the command station of the universe, fingers ready.

I swivel, bare soles on plastic chair mat, facing the screen.

The startup jingle kicks waves of dust from the speakers:

60 years of accumulated comfort. I feel it heavy

swirling in the insulated air - the forgotten

pile of floppy disks shoved in the corner,

the calculator with printer paper, unopened CD-ROMs,

a Beanie Baby, a piece of the Berlin wall,

chunky digital cameras, stacks of political pamphlets

from 4 elections ago, books with titles like:

Financial Security in the New Millennium,

1999 World Atlas, the encyclopedia,

weight loss diets, signed local autobiographies -

all forgotten. But there's a power in them still.

I feel them, in this air-conditioned oasis,

charging me with a hope unfamiliar,

a spell hoarded and dying,

an analog optimism from the edge of a new century

where a future exists, it's silicon heat spilling

over the horizon, before the towers fell

and tilted the first dark domino of this age.

My only hope is that I can absorb it through osmosis,

or through words, and take it with me.