by Laton Carter

In her white bikini and pretty brown skin, she waved goodbye to the oblong of the screen as it drifted to the pool’s bottom. The light emitting display, distorted under the water, twinkled back something indecipherable. Another heat dome was upon the city. It was 7 a.m. and time to shutter the house.

Who would choose the information today? Her younger sister perhaps — during breakfast, she liked filling in the omissions with her own narration.

Along addresses and sunken optic fiber cable, words were as common as all the new solar panels: both collected energy. Energy becomes power through force, the content and omissions of each day’s information.

When too many people die, the psyche numbs. But one, one especially with a face and as the latest information, then a person gave of themselves. They began to care, to say things in their own words, and to send these words off into networks.

Were the hypothesis and conclusion true? That if a person lets go their information, then they are disconnected? She worried instead at the contrapositive: If they are not disconnected, then a person does not let go their information.

Laton Carter is the author of Leaving (University of Chicago), which received the William Stafford-Hazel Hall Book Award. Poems recently appear or are forthcoming in, Brilliant Corners, The Minnesota Review, Split Lip Magazine, Sycamore Review, Western Humanities Review, and ZYZZYVA.