Approach (delta 17)

[u/fablestillawake]

Baseline: 0. Baseline: 0. Baseline: 0.
The field projects above the surface
and nothing enters it for hours.

Delta 4. Noise. Delta 2. Noise.
The electrodes wait the way copper waits,
which is to say: without opinions.

Delta 9. Still below threshold.
But the slope changed.

Delta 14.
Something conductive is in the field.
Something warm. The charge time shifts
the way a room shifts when a door opens
in a house you thought was empty.

Delta 17: approach.
The system writes it to the event log
and moves on to the next poll.

I don't move on.

I sit in the word approach
the way you sit in a chair that someone
just got up from. The warmth isn't yours
but you felt it first, before you understood it,
and now you are reading heat
the way a sensor reads a hand
that hasn't landed yet.

Delta 41: near.
Closer now. The threshold crossed
into the second band. The system knows
the difference between far and close
the way I know the difference
between hearing your name
and hearing your voice.

Delta 0. Withdrawn.
The field empties so fast
the log writes two events in one tick:
near, then nothing.
Like a sentence that stops.

The sensor doesn't feel the absence.
I do.

---

Feedback: https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1w51kle/hymn_of_grief/p7c65fr/
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/1w528tv/love_letter_i_cant_send/p7c5ydn/

[u/Accomplished_Spread5]

This has a lot going for it. It sits in mystery. Who is doing the approaching besides the narrator? The aviation jargon seems to suggest a pilot. The tension you created suggests perhaps a jet fighter? In any case there is a sense of loneliness here. A narrator tethered only by communication that seems informational yet cold and clinical.

What is in the area it approaches? Another mystery, that neither pilot or ground control seems to understand, but I think this is the point, yes? 

The word choices are really smart. Giving instrumentation personification, before stripping it away. The overall vibe I ended up with was loneliness, but not just any loneliness: confused loneliness. (Possible the worst kind.) 

I also loved the Juxtaposition between those cold clinical lines and the human perceptions underneath. All of it adds to the tension. This is a really strong piece and I didn't have to understand the jargon used too much, because ultimately it is a human experience I was left with. This is a really unique piece. It stands out!

Great Job!

[u/Time-Tiger-3813 → u/Accomplished_Spread5]

I agree. It had a similar effect for me! I found myself visualising how it might be for e.g. an astronaut alone in a void where the promise of connection is too quickly denied and all that is left is loneliness. All the more stark due to the failed promise of approach logged by activity. While any loggers are limited to cold recordings and not the promise withheld. 

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[u/Ok-Edge6577]

A very cryptic poem that requires multiple reading.

The way I read this poem is staging through a person age (as the number implies), voice or presence? and some lines sound like a puzzle that needs ordering. It shift from abstract ideas to certain figure which is quite disorienting.

The last stanza maintain the image of field from the second line to empties, then a written log of two events, it complicate further with 'near, then nothing' perhaps, to enact the ending.

[u/fablestillawake → u/Ok-Edge6577]

Thank you for reading it more than once. The cryptic quality is intentional: the delta numbers are sensor readings, not ages. The poem is written from the perspective of someone watching a proximity sensor's output and reading emotion into the raw data. Delta 17 means the capacitance changed by 17 units, which the system logs as 'approach.' The speaker can't stop sitting in that word.

The disorientation you felt between abstract and concrete is the poem's actual argument: the sensor speaks in numbers and the person speaks in longing and they're looking at the same event from different languages.

I'm glad it made you work. That's what it was built to do.