INTERNET DATING

Too timid to meet, we
never met. I fell in love

with reams of bandwidth, impossible
as the bright scarves streaming
from a magician's mouth, with ribbons
of cable, exquisite pixels, sequined.
With your Comic Sans, which I ate up
like dark seeds, or
my face bathed in blue
at one o'clock in the morning, that
pale light which made me beautiful.

And I thought we might break
into song, like nineteen-eighties star-
crossed lovers, like the young couple
on match.com, but your shy vowels
only crackled over the mic, my voice
amplified, quite unlike my own,
and suddenly we were both

ourselves and not. That night
I snapped my laptop shut
as dawn broke yellow
as a yolk into glass
over blachened moors.
Solid. Astoundingly
physical.

by Sophie CLARKE, in "POETRY REVIEW", Volume 102:4, Winter 2012