Computer Girls
By Brigid Regan McCarthy
We are robots instead
of sisters. As computer girls, we power up
and have bolts for breakfast in silence. You see,
the software doesn’t make us
soft, we do. So we aren’t, speaking
only from the language of our binary brains
where I calculate closeness
in our memories and you
have forgotten it all. At night, when we shut down, our signals
cross in the dark. The bug of longing, the virus
of archive. You used to grow freckles in the summertime.
Can’t you recall when we spoke
to each other ancient secrets
through the walls? I swear sisterhood aches
even as we operate without it.
Brigid Regan McCarthy is from the Jersey Shore. Her work is published in ionosphere, Atlantis, Mistake House Magazine, and elsewhere. She lives and works at present in El Hierro, Canary Islands as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant.
She can be found on Instagram at @brigmccarthy.