Poetry for Engineers: Safe Distance

How do I touch you across the ocean, across cold depths where light travels through glass. Not copper—fibers. Optical. Through liquid glass, through flickering light that carries you in fragments. Light broken into pulses. You say: it’s easier this way. What are we missing like this? You smile. Safe distance. I say: network. Signals slide beneath the sea, through cables thinner than trust, faster than touch, slower than longing. We stand alone, together. Synchronous, yet apart. Icons replace skin, latency replaces breath. This distance protects us. Silence that feels intentional. Everything is under control as long as nothing truly hurts. And we choose it because it shields us from what we might become if we actually met. You are my counterpoint. My response. My reflection at a safe distance. Beneath the ocean, nodes remember paths. Packets shake hands without bodies. If we get lost, we resend everything, with error, with noise, with hope.