Female In A Bot Marriage

She chooses a game-ready
cyber representative
that has everything
her flesh self never had.
Then the start button is pushed.
The game is on.
She finds herself lying,
manifested,
next to a green metallic male being.
Despite her previous design efforts,
she ends up green too.
She has become cleverly assembled
into the image of his forever companion.
She battles, but
never speaks.
She battles, but
her bot experiences no pain.
No bones break.
Just shattering sound blips
of clanking and clashing.
No scars show.
No discernible expressions.
No altercation elicits even one tiny tear
as she moves time-trapped through
her fixed size graphic area,
all data coded, compressed, and decoded,
bleeding red eight-bits-per-pixel blobs.
She is animated, destroyed,
reanimated, destroyed, reanimated,
destroyed, reanimated,
achieving each next, more
accomplished level.
Her cyber-steely
alter ego burns and bends,
until she drops her joy stick.
Soda spills.
The game stops beneath the glass.

Edison Review (2014)

© Cathy Allman
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