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And then one day, it was all gone. It started with Facebook. The world tipped sideways running for Instagram and Snapchat after Facebook disappeared. All those pictures, all those private messages. Gone and gone, gone the way of Vines. Tinder, Twitter, Tumbler… gone. We had no way to tag each other in family pictures or deliver 140-character salvos. No more cat videos or frog memes. No more pics of our dimpled babies sharing summer ice cream. No more wedding fails or fishing fails. No more n-word posts from that girl you know is so much more. The only way we could offer our condolences was in person, or by picking up the phone if we were simply too far away.
Black night bloomed because nobody checked their phones in their beds while waiting on sleep. Lovers drew hearts and funny faces on each other’s skin instead, asking, “Does that feel good? Do you like that?”
It was the cramp heard ’round the world, all those young people’s hands suddenly grasping pens trying to figure out cursive. The loss of spell-check was called a tragedy.
The night social media died the world mourned. But we started seeing hazel and blue and coffee brown eyes and freckles and blonde hairs on our cheeks. We grew about 1.5 inches taller since we were no longer looking down into a glowing screen of infinite wisdom, hate, horror, irony, caring, sharing, and love. All that was left was finding out what our real voices sound like, and discovering we have real thoughts that cannot be captured with a picture of a heart or a snake.
“What’s that, daddy?”
“It’s the moon, sweetie. It’s been there a while, and I promise it’ll be back again tomorrow. Wanna come out with me and see?”
There was a long pause. She had nothing better to do, so she shrugged and said, “I guess.”
