if the phone is a butterfly flapping its light

at the flower, what is the flower?

is it my mother's eyes looking at it

honeyed with attention, or is it

the facebook algorithm swaying

between bad humor and mad hate?

maybe it's the photo of my father

she has tucked into a see-through pocket

of her flip-cover from where he glows

in all that she glows in.

in the photo my father doesn't blink.

if he has to go (can't he stay, just a little

forever more?) he should go when i blink.

i can't see him be frozen and funnied by dying.

but how naïve of me, to assume that life

will not show me what i don't want to see

or tell me how many terabytes of sighing

is required to store this little lifelikeness of mine.

~ajay

20/3/2022