Leslie Aileen Ross (1991) “System Crash,” The Prairie Light Review: Vol. 10 : No. 2

Ma, I’ve become addicted to waterfalls

and my shrink tells me

I have memory damage —

Must have been that last thunderstorm

that knocked out my hard disk.

Ma, I’ve become addicted to waterfalls

and my shrink tells me

the memories I have left are only

the ones I dumped to floppies

before the power hit.

Ma, I’ve become addicted to waterfalls

and my shrink tells me

it’s good that I’ve been writing

and storing my files for the past

twenty years.

Ma, I’ve become addicted to waterfalls

and my shrink tells me

I have to restore the backup copies.

I can rebuild my system

from there.