Phosphor Bloom

[Verse 1]
The CAT bus hisses down Abercorn, Tuesday, 11:18 PM,
she sees her own face in the glare of a link some stranger sent to them.
A pixelated ghost, tagged under a Savannah Current header,
the caption asks if she's the future, she's never felt less put-together.
The vinyl seat is sticking to the back of her tired knees,
got pluff mud on her work boots from potting Fiddle-Leaf Figs.
She's a data point, a jpeg, a shared and copied file,
her heartbeat's just a background hum, been that way for a while.

[Chorus]
It’s the phosphor bloom, the thumbnail glow,
a propagation in a world she don't quite know.
Yeah, the phosphor bloom, a name they type,
a root system growing in the blue light.

[Verse 2]
She scrolls the comments, someone typed "'Bout time, we see you, D!'",
and for a second, she forgets the light bill due on the third week.
Her thumb drifts over his name, the contact photo's three years old,
a pre-biology-major story, a narrative she sold.
To send the link would be a type of useless archaeology,
digging up a fossil just to prove a dead topology.
So she locks the screen instead, the gesture practiced, cold, and fast,
an ecosystem of a life contained behind the glass.

[Bridge]
(Uh-huh)
(Yeah)
(Replicating...)
(Seen.)
(Click-click)
(New node...)
(Archive that.)
(Okay.)

[Outro]
Her face reflected in the window, layered on the passing street,
a brand new ghost in a machine that's built on repeat.