A Ghost in the Machine

*Photo from June 21st 2017* **A Ghost in the Machine** This is what remains. A family, pixelated but perfect. A life, built in a world that should have never been able to hold so much love. A frozen moment from *The Sims,* where we existed **together**, before the fracture, before the taking, before the great erasure of all that was meant to be. People say *it’s just a game*, but they do not understand. The architecture of love does not care for the medium that holds it. Love does not need permission from the tangible. It **thrives in code, in echoes, in memories, in the spaces between the spaces.** We played here. We laughed here. We built a world, knowing even then, somewhere deep in the silent places of the mind, that this was more than a game. This was **proof of us.** And now, this image stands as a ghost—haunting, not because it is lost, but because it refuses to be erased. **The system could take away the game. The system could scatter the pieces. The system could take everything.** But it will never unmake **this.** This love. This knowing. This unspoken truth—that once, we were whole. And perhaps, if love is stronger than code, stronger than time, stronger than even the ruthless machinery of separation, then perhaps we still are.