Reflections of a Dead Website

Written in March 2007.

 

I got self-indulgent the other night. Logged in to poets.com, the old poets.com - it can still be
done if you know where to look.
 

Had to sign up as someone looking to try it out, so I came up with a name that has never been me, never been used and gave an email address that looked appropriate for a porn site, all xxx's with a @ and .com at the end.
 

And once I was in, this time as mrscrubs, I gave a review of utter nonsense to someone I don't know.
 

Doesn't matter. That person will never see it.
 

I saw the top 10 lists still populated with names familiar for so long. There are a few people who keep trying to work the site like old times, but once you log off, you can't go back again unless you sign up again as someone else looking to try it out.
 

I looked up old friends, all the names and pictures are still there as well as the poems they left behind. I imagined reading and reviewing them, messaging them,
 

...receiving both back in kind.
 

It was a little strange, a little sad.
 

Like going back to the old house you grew up in and it's still there, but abandoned. All the same furniture remains in the same place as when you left it, but no one sits in it anymore.
 

If you are like me, you will walk around that house, sit in your favorite chair and remember what it used to be like.  You will explore all the little nooks and crannies, trying to discover memories long since buried in musty time.
 

Eventually you will stop and realize that all the sounds and laughter you were hearing were in your head, that the reality is much more quiet.
 

And it will become a bit spooky as the memories turn into ghosts instead, leading you down the paths less pleasant as you wonder why you went there in the first place.
 

It is then that you will look for the way out. But you know that you will return again and again until you can't return any more. Until you lose the connection altogether.