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Back in the day
when “facebook” meant
“when you are present,
I can read the pages in your eyes”
and “twitter” spoke only of
the prayers of birds,  when “myspace”
meant the aura of my under-rolling skin
expanding toward yours
and “the web” was only 
the net of attraction,

there was the long current
of our holding and our capture,
the way we laid animal
upon each other, turning
over and over, slain and reborn
over and over, again and again
refreshed, and 

the checking and rechecking,
seeking new messages of confirmation,
affirming that our hands talked well for us,
that our limbs had crossed strongly
into fantastic semaphores.

So far off, now, the intimate roar of all that;

yet when you rise unexpected
in avatar before me
in the odd spirit land 
of my screen, 

I can feel a tug in my grandma-purse heart
that holds all the rubble of real life;

a tug of surprise
that it is so full,
so full of my recall
of your actual touch.