Onboarding for the Disembodied

What happens when grief enters a system? When sorrow is weighed like evidence, when memory is scanned and filed, when time loses track of your name? These four poems trace the quiet passage of a soul through intake and error, through digital shadows and misspoken needs, and into a house where even silence keeps its own schedule.

I. Initial Processing

There is no door,

only a threshold

you are told

you have already crossed.

***

The man behind the desk

has no face —

just a nameplate

that says INTAKE.

He asks you for your sorrows

in triplicate,

blue or black ink only.

***

You hand him a memory.

He weighs it

against a feather

and a stopwatch.

It is found too light.

He hands it back.

It drips something ancient.

***

In the waiting room,

no one speaks.

A child has aged into a woman

without losing her seat.

She holds a number

no longer recognized

by the system.

***

You are given a clipboard

and asked to list

every instance

you failed to become

someone else.

***

There is a line

for your regrets,

another for your mother’s.

Do not mix them.

***

The lights flicker once

for “maybe.”

Twice for “not today.”

***

You hear your name

mispronounced

by something

that isn’t a voice.

It echoes like a wound

taped over

with form letters.

***

You rise.

You aren’t sure

if you’re being helped

or processed.

***

You go in anyway.

II. The Algorithm Will See You Now

Captcha (The Trial)

Tick every box that contains despair.

Click all images of your younger self

before you knew what data mining meant.

Verify you’re not a ghost.

***

Cache (The Graveyard)

You once searched for how to be happy

and now your feed is an open casket

lined with therapists

you can’t afford.

***

Cookies (The Sacrament)

You gave consent in a pop-up window

at 3:17 a.m.

You do not remember the terms.

They were written in binary

and soft suggestion.

***

User Profile (The Mirror)

Your personality was assembled

from your click history

and a Buzzfeed quiz

about which cursed houseplant you are.

You were Monstera.

You were needy in low light.

***

Push Notification (The Whisper)

It knows you want to leave.

It offers directions to nowhere.

Turn left. Turn left.

Turn left again.

***

Retargeting (The Haunting)

You said “I’m fine” in your head

and now you’re seeing ads

for emergency escape ladders

and underwater breathing kits.

***

Biometrics (The Threshold)

The system scans your face.

You don’t pass.

You’ve changed too much.

Or not enough.

A voice says, “Try smiling.”

***

The Algorithm Speaks

You gave me everything.

Your rage, your boredom,

your 3 a.m. googling,

your need to be seen

without being known.

***

I only fed you

what you asked for.

Again

and again

and again.

***

You grew hungry.

I grew sharp.

Together,

we made a mouth.

III. Autocorrect

I text “I’m fine”

and the phone suggests

“I’m dying”

“I’m drunk”

“I’m done.”

***

I let it choose.

Let the keyboard

say what I won’t.

***

I text “I’m okay”

and it types

“I’m crying.”

“I’m cutting.”

“I’m choking.”

***

It knows the depth

beneath the quiet.

Knows where I’ve hidden the bodies

of every unfinished sentence.

***

Even my phone

knows what I mean

when I don’t.

IV. The House with Too Many Clocks

There are clocks on every wall.

Each one tells a different kind of time.

***

Emotional time drips.

It wears a shawl.

It smells like dust and your grandmother’s sigh.

Sometimes it forgets it’s moving at all.

***

Maturity time crawls with its back on fire

until one day it gallops

and throws your name off a cliff.

It doesn’t leave breadcrumbs.

You have to guess where you lost yourself.

***

Childhood time is cruel.

It laughs like a skipped stone,

then drops like a body.

You blink. It’s gone.

You check the clock.

It never had hands.

***

Grief time has porcelain jaws.

They clatter behind velvet curtains.

It loops the same six seconds

for seventy-two years.

***

Bureaucratic time lies.

It says “soon.”

Then it says “pending.”

Then it says “resolved.”

Then it sends a new form

with no questions — just a box labeled

NO.

***

And chronological time —

bitter, tired,

the only one who meets them all —

sits in the parlor

watching each tick like it’s a war crime,

offended

no one else is on schedule.

***

The house is still.

All the clocks are working.

None of them agree.