Selective Visibility

 

I do not vanish from the world;

 I learn instead the older art of appearing partially.

The way dusk offers light without confession,

The way water reflects a face yet refuses to keep it.

I allow the morning to speak through a cup warming my palms,

Through a window rehearsing the sky,

But I withhold the coordinates of my breath,

Because some selves, once rendered in full resolution,

Are never returned to their original owners.

The eye of the machine asks for clarity, symmetry, and obedience—

It wants my face as data, my hours as pattern, 

My silence as consent—

So I answer with angles, with cropped horizons, 

With hands that hold language

instead of evidence,

With shadows trained to mean presence without surrender.

What they call sharing, I rename selection;

What they call access, I dilute into fragments.

Enough warmth to remain legible,

Never enough exposure to be consumed and overtly visible.

My life continues to pulse online, yes,

but behind a membrane woven of cautious  memory,

Thin enough to let affection pass,

Thick enough to stop extraction.

I am not hiding from the world;

I am safeguarding the future self

who will one day thank me

for not mistaking visibility for intimacy,

or being seen for feeling safe.

Let them scroll past my days like archaeologists of absence,

Finding traces, never possession,

Because I remain intact precisely by refusing completion—

A whole life,

undownloaded and unapproachable. 

I am not hiding.

I am protecting the future version of me

from strangers who mistake visibility

for consent.

They ask for access.

I offer fragments—

Enough to feel human,

Never enough to be owned.

My life still breathes online.

But behind a veil

Thin as ethics,

Thick as survival.

©® Farheen Akter Bhuian Nancy 

Time Frame: 6.09 AM, Tagar Building.