Emma
Lee

               A screen sculpts a crumpled mass

               in an empty house, a 3-D image that

               takes the shape of what could be a heart.

               A sci-fi trope: machines outliving us.

               We all hope what will survive of us

               is not the pile of admin, worthless warranties,

               the embarrassing tweet, the spilt coffee,

               but our Insta life, our filtered wishes.

               The sculpture is not the easy outline

               of an emoji, but the complexity

               of valves, veins, a possibility

               of an organ, a human's engine.

               Here, what's left is our digital footprint,

               the avatar we taught to fight, scavenge, collect.

               Playerless it repeats the same responses, contact

               only from bots, a drift of binary lint.

               It's the unedited part of us that decided

               who we touched. The digital heart

               waits for us to breathe emotion into it,

               sculpting the memory of what it most wanted.