She asked me, anonymously, “why don’t you love me anymore?”

I told her, “I never did. I just loved that costume you’d wear for me. I never even realized there was a person under it all. I thought it was a series of automated responses. I thought it was battery plugged into something mechanized.”

Her eyes are soft and sad, like somewhere I could lay down and stay for a while. Curl up tight upon yourself, and just cry yourself to sleep. Cry me to sleep. Cry me a nice little river to drown in. Hold me down, tears seeping into my lungs like ocean water. Like dying under perfectly clear waves.

Like dying frozen under glass.

She asks me, anonymously, “do you still think about me?”

I tell her, maybe. I tell her, sometimes. I tell her, what I think she wants or needs to hear. I tell her what I have to, the words forcing themselves out of my mouth like a viral attack. My ideas in her head, my little letters spelling out messages in her head.

This is one of them. Her robot head was swapped with yours, and now you’re thinking her same thoughts too. The plagiarism of ideals; a pirate radio broadcast of internalized frequencies. Get off my heart-beat. She gets off, on my heart-beat. 

She asks me, anonymously, “do you think we’ll ever fuck?”

I’m not sure what she’d call this. 

Her clockwork heart slows, and spits a broken gear into the sand.