02
CC
03
52
CC
11
16
FF
16

The lashes unfolded to the ocean in her eyes…

Some sticky honey made by bees…

These are scraps of the only poems that fit onto my 1.2 MB floppy disk, which was decent sized at the time. Some of these words were inspired by books I’ve read, photos I’ve browsed on Fotki, or conversations I’ve had with my childhood friends on MSN. They were also among the only surviving documents from the Great Computer Collapse of 2005. That old Windows 2000 HP just couldn’t handle my profound elementary school words. Or was it a Compaq? Maybe it was a Dell before Adele, 10 years later, gave “hello” a new meaning.

I remember trying not to trip on the DSL cords that branched off like veins into each room of my parents’ house, emanating from a pulsating, slowly failing heart. Although the dialup modem was uprooted and replaced with a DSL wireless, my heart could never replace the files—the childhood stories—that were lost.

Dear Diary,

[Enter password to open file]

As for the documents that remain, I lament the faith that I had in my ability to remember passwords. Somehow, though, I feel that I owe to the young me to see if I’m still the same person, even with the changing world around me.

Anna Kozak is an MA candidate for Ryerson University’s Literatures of Modernity Master’s Program.