Panopticus

It started with Merlin —
red plastic, eleven buttons,
shaped like something
that would take thirty years
to become our keeper.

We didn’t know that then.
We just wanted it
the way we wanted everything
that beeped and lit up,
desperately, frantically…
speaking it’s name to momma,
On a list addressed to Santa,
and a contingency prayer.

Next it was the Atari in the family room…
wood-grain panel,
joystick worn smooth
in the spot my thumb found
every afternoon after school,
a groove I made
without knowing
I was practicing.

First Combat. Night Driver. Pitfall.
Then something with a sword
and a dragon and a map
so large it needed a notebook
to hold it —
and we bent over that notebook
like monks,
like cartographers,
like boys who had found
the only world
that needed them.

Nobody said: watch how long you look.
Nobody said: notice what it wants from you.
It wanted quarters.
It wanted afternoons.
It wanted us back
the next day
and the next,
and we came back
because it remembered our score
even when nothing else did.

By the time the internet arrived
we were already trained —
already fluent in the grammar
of the glowing screen,
already comfortable
being seen by something
that couldn’t see us back.

Or so we thought.

Now I carry the thing everywhere.
It knows my pace, my pulse,
the route I drove at 2 a.m.
the night my father called.
It knows what I searched
when I couldn’t sleep.
It knows before I do
what I’m going to want next.

Foucault said the genius of the prison
was making the inmate his own guard…
but he was thinking walls,
thinking watchtower,
thinking someone had to build the thing
and someone had to live inside it.

He didn’t know about Merlin.
He didn’t know
we’d beg for it under the tree,
tear the paper off ourselves,
and spend the whole Christmas afternoon
learning to love the bleep
of being monitored.

The light never goes off.
We stopped noticing
when we stopped looking for it.

I was eight.
I had a high score.
I was so proud.