Incognito

The blue light of the phone is a cold, flat sun

bleaching the sheets while the rest of the street is dead.

I typed 'how long for a body to' and stopped,

my thumb hovering over the rest of the dread.

I wanted to know about the breakdown of cells,

about the physics of what we leave behind in the dirt,

but the cursor just blinked like a steady, white pulse

asking me exactly where it started to hurt.

I deleted the string of words one by one,

terrified of a server somewhere keeping the ghost.

I’m just an anonymous string of numbers and clicks

searching for the thing that scares me the most.