cloud bone

sometimes i go take a nap
in dead people's data. an old word 
document with a blinking cursor
& three lines of poetry. when a friend turned
into a blue heron a few years ago
i found out in the bathroom at work.
my impulse was to call him. all the feathers.
he had tried to talk to me a few weeks before. 
it had been his decision. at first i thought
of his body & then all the trails of 
keys pressed in the big master cloud. uploaded femur
& blood in a spam folder. his bones
everywhere, unburied. that night i got
a shovel & i dug into the walls looking
for the internet. not just the cable but 
a portal into the big elegy. i found a few pictures
of us & an unanswered facebook message.
i tore away wallpaper until i was sitting
on his side of the glow. unsent half-letters.
a bowl of searches like a litany. ever since i have
been a frequent traveler in the digital land
of the dead. whenever someone i know dies
i spend hours on their social media profiles.
sometimes i'll send them an email. in the night
i go deeper. their ribs like space bars pressing
the dark's organ pedal. my favorite places to arrive
are destinations on the wayback machine. 
time capsule of fingers. herons in code & herons
in the sky. i will sometimes discover someone gone
who i didn't mean to. i had wanted them
to be alive in my head forever. when that happens
i have to dig myself loose quickly
run out of the house & into the hyacinth field.
all the computers there. my friends' bones 
duplicated & yet still somehow absent 
in the only way i need. i visit my friend's profile still.
no one has taken it down & for that i am 
so grateful. i don't want an memorial. i want
his ghost. every once in awhile another friend will write
on his facebook wall something like, "i saw
a blue heron today & i knew it was you."