My Online Residence

My address was once a patch of land,
Where roots took hold and walls could stand.
But now my life is stored in the cloud,
A virtual home, where shadows crowd.

To reach this space where my memories dwell,
I need a device, a screen, to tell.
A laptop, a tablet, or phone in hand,
Each portal a route to this foreign land.

Yet first, I must find a connection to flow
Without the internet, where can I go?
Wi-Fi or data, my lifeline to view,
But every signal feels fragile and few.

I pay for this storage, this home in the air,
Yet to claim it, I must navigate despair.
A password to enter, a code to unlock,
What happens when my access is blocked?

This space is a rental, a tenuous lease,
A fragile existence that offers no peace.
With each login, I step through a door,
But one glitch away from losing it all once more.

I trust these platforms to guard what I share,
Yet who really owns it? Do they even care?
Photos of birthdays, my child’s first smile,
All stored in a vault, yet they feel so far away
And what if the company decides to betray?
Terms and conditions, a labyrinthine bind,
In the fine print lies a truth hard to find.
What’s mine isn’t really; it’s borrowed, at best
At any moment, I could fail this test.

The weight of my milestones—first steps, first nights
Could dissolve in an instant, lost to the bytes.
Years of my labor, each triumph I’ve claimed,
Could vanish like whispers, unprotected, unnamed.
A hard drive failure, a sudden crash,
And my life could dissolve in a digital trash.

Every click, every transaction, a gamble I play,
In a world where my past could just slip away.
What if the servers go down in a storm?
Or a hacker exploits this fragile form?
Am I just a pawn in a game I can't see,
A puppet with strings that control all of me?

This online residence, where I conduct my trade,
Is a house of cards, built on trust that’s betrayed.
With each upload, I risk what I hold dear,
A trade-off for safety, yet full of fear.

We all need this home, a shelter for lives,
Yet its foundations are shaky, uncertainty thrives.
With every transaction, I gamble my soul,
In a system designed to swallow me whole.
What happens when I can’t pay the price?
Will my memories vanish, lost in the ice?

In this constant search for a safe place to stay,
I question the cost of this digital way.
So here I stand, at this precipice high,
With a heart full of questions that never comply.

Is this the home I thought I’d find,
Or just a mirage, cruelly designed?
As I scroll through my life, can I truly be free,
When the essence of me is just data to see?
Are we mere specters, with nowhere to roam,
In a world where our stories aren’t really our own?