Joshua Gottlieb-Miller

Raised on side-scrollers,

each stage a level up, flag and castle,

that dopamine rush of a map

unfolding, world laid bare;

as a boy I pretended

moving forward took intention.

Now every big boss

is me, somehow indifferent:

aimlessly raiding the fridge,

cutting a slice of mild cheddar

from its shrinking block,

using one hand to look at homes

on Zillow, washing red, seedless

grapes, touring houses flooded

and remediated, slipping

grapes off their stem,

multiplying future raises

against current interest rates

until I’m paralyzed,

as if someone I’ll never meet

left their controller face-down.

You need to live a little, my son says,

before I drop him off at school,

meaning it, at least at first, sincerely:

he’d skip work, play every video game;

why wouldn’t I, just for today?

I can be his avatar.

I’ve got no time for side quests,

but when I take the long way

on my commute, pass

this single stretch of flower-blur

before the Volvo dealership

—small, convincing details—

riding the city limits,

passing giant transformers,

Mobile gas station, a vast expanse

of auto-save . . . one raised highway

levels up over the trees

until I can see the brains of the forest.

Afternoon he takes one look at me,

then stares out the window

past his school. I need time

to think, he says.

I idle the car, watch him fish

from the backseat a book

he’d read before.

He’s reading it again. He doesn’t care

how it ends.

I’m fighting the urge

to ask about his friends,

what he learned,

and he has yet to tell me again

to ‘live a little.’ They taught

about experiments in school.

Theory means

you have an answer

that’s not always right.

On cue I’m convinced

we’re on a speedrun,

then just as quickly

that I was wrong.

I used to think living in a video game

meant I could do anything.

The rest of our drive I puzzle

the code to keep alive

this save point,

to hack the secret level,

as if what I teach can change me

without having to learn it.