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

eternally hidden behind dusty 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.

I swivel, bare soles on plastic chair mat, fingers ready.

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 in the corner,

a printing calculator, 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 it, in this air-conditioned oasis

in the middle-of-nowhere Florida,

charging me with an unfamiliar faith,

a spell hoarded and dying,

an analog optimism from the edge of a new century

where a better future existed, its silicon heat spilling

over the horizon, before the towers fell

and tilted the first domino of this dark age.

I absorb it through osmosis and hope

I have the strength to carry it with me.