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By Karen Steiger

You are frozen,

mid-sentence,

in a tiny box on my screen.

Your voice,

rendered metallic now,

fades in and out,

and you just said something important,

something vulnerable,

but I couldn’t hear.

“What was that?” I ask your image.

You are half-closed eyelids

with an open mouth

showing a row of bottom teeth.

“W—w—w—w—w—w,”

you reply.

The box that houses you

goes black,

disappears for a moment,

then returns.

You are now a happy grin,

eyes looking off to the right.

I can only stare at myself

in the corner now,

my large round head,

like one of Jupiter’s smaller moons,

my double chin,

dull, disobedient hair.

I am frozen now too,

staring into the green unblinking eye

of the camera.

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Author:

Karen Steiger (she/her) lives in Schaumburg, Illinois. She frequently posts on her blog, The Midlife Crisis Poet, and her work has been published in The Wells Street Journal, Arsenika, The Pangolin Review, and Black Bough Poetry. Her poetry will soon appear in Kaleidotrope, Mineral Lit Mag, and Rejection Letters. Find her on Twitter @maisedawg.

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This piece is a part of DISTANCED 2.0.