We met
Online.
The word
“Online”
Doesn’t even fit
On poetry page.
What line?
The line that (we imagine)
Exists between people
Across the distance,
across the borders,
enfolding the globe like a web.
It is an imaginary line:
You cannot touch nor see it.

But would it have been better without it?

Without being able to hide behind a picture on the screen,
Without getting bold and free with this incognito status,
Asking another person their name, their age,
Whether they like collecting pebbles
Or having sex on the beach?
Would it have been better?

Online dating is like a Venetian masquerade:
You wear your profile picture like a Volto,
Winking and flirting, and when you finally meet
Face to face, you may discover
a face of a leper under a mask of a Pantaloon.

Your profile picture was a glass of wine – how dull!
Not even a sunset or a waterfall.

Yet in your case words spoke better than a thousand pictures
You weaved your words around me
Until I could resist no longer
Caught up in your eloquence
Your cold command of language.
You used words like “sojourn” and “acquiesce”,
And when you suddenly said, “Let’s have a drink,”
I wanted to say, “Potentially” or “Perchance”, to shield myself,
But suddenly I dropped my mask
And said, “Sure, I can do
Friday, at 5pm.”

# # #

Myla Rousseau is a pen-name of the literary scholar Darya Protopopova. She published numerous book reviews and articles on literature in academic periodicals, including Bodleian Library Record, Virginia Woolf Miscellany, Times Literary Supplement and others. Her interests include foreign influences on British literature, especially the ghosts of Leo Tolstoy and characters from the Italian commedia dell’arte.

Photo: Serkan Turk