Your side of the bed lumpy, ill-rendered pixels –

less machine than faun I am moodstruck 

by design. Our neighbour who always wets himself 

warns us only gods get holiday here. We’re kept 

busy, stop only to sleep. But is worth living like this, 

like human tamagotchi? Queued play-loops & rivers

of furniture falling, sky-sent, to the chime of currency.

I cook ten tacos in our rank 5 fridge; your food bar 

goes green but I remain envy-eyed, tarantular. Twin, 

you say. You don’t need love, you need a stat respec. 

Eclipsed in earning potential, made chore-bound,

I’m kept occupied, cleaning our dream keep until 

we unlock the robot bin and maid. Spurned one night, 

I’ll fill my social meter on a stranger. A fresh marionette

to share electric marrow with. Community freeplay,

I’ll call it, & for once the winking agency-emerald 

hovers over my head, not yours. Inside my heart,

a ladderless pool, burning countertops in a room 

with no doors. As flies to wanton boys are we 

to the user. But outside the camera’s frustrum, 

in the eternal night of ungenerated assets, 

perhaps we’ll weep together, dance in secret;

tessellating polygods on a textureless lawn,

two simulations blending, unblending, unreal 

engines producing digital love with our bodies,

graphic and mosaic-blurred: our freeware, our unity.