To ask me to stop playing video games,

you’re asking me to abandon and betray

the only part of myself that’s never left me.

You know how I ask the player in my head

how he’s doing every morning

and he tells me he’s here?

How next, I ask him where here is

and he sort of points to himself?

He smiles my eyes out with a riddle,

but really just likes to pretend that

he thinks he’s all that? Well,

that’s just how it goes with me.

Inner life trumps all. Video games till the end.

These conversations I have with the spirit,

have over the decades become

the only thing I can count on.