Pressing themselves, all of them, into permanent wallflowers,
these young people gone flat at functions, standing still,
eyes lasers on screens, still in the spring, yet with nothing
to say to one another, stuck here together, not learning
how social events exist for a purpose other than getting
high enough to play video games on another level,
muscle memory covering for fingers’ skewed focus.
Interpersonal skills we developed when no internet
existed, what’s happened to them, required before
social media arrived, the new sitting with friends at tables
supposedly eating a meal, together, and using most
of that time to fiddle on a phone, sometimes
even texting the person sitting next to you because
it’s easier to do than talk, conversation becoming
the lost art of – remarkable – speaking words face-to-face,
perhaps, I see, the loss of speech being another evolutionary
step on the way to social isolation due to compartmentalization.
Even I forget how now at times, that skill still barely with me.
Lanning Lee 