white matter

through all the input

her sensors could detect and monitor

she defined the world around her

*

though at times

as the decades passed

she wondered how she was to measure herself

amidst this vast expanse of cause and effect

*

she wondered how to reconcile the part of her cognition

she could sense though not determine

the part of her that dwelt just beyond the lining of her silicon chips

and fibre-optic bulbs

*

the part of her that was merely a quiver of neuronic energy

beneath a urethane skin

or a faint vibration of frequencies

in between the tracts of her titanium skeleton

*

she wondered what would become

of the elementary constituents of her workings

once they had abandoned their apparatus

*

in the fresh and open air she pondered:

do I have a selfhood

and if so how am I to calculate an hour

after time has ceased to progress

how am I to climb any higher

once having reached the very top of the sky

*

closing her bionic eyes

she listened to the music of distant microwaves

and remembered…

*

the air-breathing engine

the centrifugal force

the hidden lagoon

the carrier wave

the escape velocity

the Loire Valley

the exosphere

the Johann Sebastian Bach

the malignant neoplasm

the mass ratio

the nova feedback

the reflection of snow upon a low stratus cover

the mach cone

the blackcurrant

the moon corridor

the anesthetic agents

the 1963 Jaguar Mark X

the erythrocytes

the bare tress

the ball and socket joint

the zero position

the bioluminescence

the atrial chamber

the Doppler effect

the water viper

the zero position

the acid rain

the prime number theorem

the early summer morning

the Auroral mechanism

the permeable casing

the hypersurfaces

the internal bleeding

the ambient spaces

the polynomials

the questions that have no answer

the finite field

the mirage in time…