I am a system in the making.
I sit on a desk by a window.
Grey-lit,
The library lays at my feet.
Quietly I remove
(From my slouching backpack)
The familiar little white keyboard
And in my lap let it sit.
My partner.
Everyone with their earbuds,
Faces lowered and washed in electronic light,
Lounges among the shelves
And paperbacks
Around us.
My shy fingers testing
The keys, and as per usual
They click in and rise back
Without fuss.
Content to be unheard and unseen,
I go to work,
Slowly at first, but
My plans start to fall into place.
I write code for my presence.
I write for my heels
A tempo to play against the legs of the desk
And a soft smile for my soft-eyed face.
I have the skeleton of my fervor down,
To flood through my preinstalled veins,
And now,
I add a rudimentary line of passion,
A trick I learned from the Internet.
But, how
Will I go about tackling the
Complicated network of my pre-wired brain?
With a bite at my lip
I highlight and delete
Old instructions, old opinions,
Old pain.
Clearing bits of me up and reworking them
Is my time-honored tradition,
During study hall.
I rearrange salvaged text
And adjust it,
A new never-before
Is in there somewhere,
Behind the numbers and letters and all.
Hm hm-hm..
Patiently, my fingers tap and
Select,
Drag and copy and paste,
Perfect, and correct.
Even if,
Around me,
Is a colorful garden of themes..
They were made by someone else,
So I shake my head and keep it down,
Nose in my own original designs,
And painstakingly handcrafted dreams.
On the bus ride home,
I look around once or twice,
Take my old keyboard back out.
I make notes
On all the details I've gathered
From my wanders in hallways
And the people throughout.
Sometimes, on my stomach,
Working in my own room with ankles
Swinging, I
Browse memories, tales, and audio clips
And link them for later,
In a secluded folder
Where they might (until then) safely lie.
Late at night, still
Can I be found working..
By flashlight, with tired eyes
Still bright.
Yeah..
(I say.)
It'll be done
Someday.
No award-winning, mind-spinning,
Neat-and-trim code..
But a lengthy thing,
A bit of an organized mess,
Full of bugs and holes,
Little glitches, results
Of carelessness, or, more likely, amateurism.
And it will be the best
Story I've ever written.
If we are all formulae,
Mine will be
All my own, and not shown
For any price, or downloaded into a million other users' bones.
I will walk, not loudly,
But beaming, and proudly,
With my worn keyboard clutched to my chest,
The one that tirelessly typed out
Each strong-minded step.
I am a system in the making,
But there's scrap metal for the taking..
And when I'm finished,
A woman,
Fondly smoothing out smeared and folded up sheets from her past,
There won't be anything left inside me to regret.
