i baptized my keyboard many times,
not with water, but with my home
made mountain dew.
each spill a contract:
you translate my chaos,
i ignore your sticky protests.
it speaks in clicks, not apologies,
predictable as a metronome,
as honest as a segmentation fault,
no cryptic social rules,
just syntax or silence.
we understand each other,
this plastic oracle and i,
it doesn’t care about my tone,
i don’t blame it for needing to dry.
our relationship is pure cause and effect:
press v, get v,
not v plus hidden meanings.
some say it’s just a tool.
they’ve never felt
the sacred relief of muscle memory,
the joy of a backspace key
that actually deletes what i tell it to.
i baptized my keyboard many times,
and in return, it taught me:
not everything needs to be a negotiation.
sometimes a command is just a command.
sometimes a sticky key
is just a spill you haven’t cleaned yet.
the caps lock is my exclamation point.
the power button is my full stop.