Electric

Don’t look.

*

The screen flickers open--

checkerboard teeth, white

bullet points tattooed

across the zigzag black,

back to front.

*

The molar buzz

of static, chomping

down lines of untranslatable

code, rat-a-tat rustle

of information, transferred.

*

Don’t look.

*

Sweat hot and cold

on your skin, acrid

flavor of defeat

curling around your tongue.

*

It can hear you breathing, it can

hear your brain bubbling

as loud as screaming

through the lightning air.

*

Suddenly

*

a woman is singing,

sweet siren of melodies,

gentle notes, soothing,

and you can breathe again,

you can raise your eyeballs,

creaking with strain.

*

Maybe

you were wrong.

Maybe there is nothing to harm you. Maybe

you will wake in the morning,

laughing as the night

terrors lose their grasp.

Maybe---