In the excavation of a closet
packed with my siblings’ left-behind belongings
I found a floppy disk
carefully labeled in my sister’s middle school hand
(bubble letters were all the rage)
which read:

PRIVATE: do not read!!!

Perhaps if I was the kind of sister who pried
(and had a computer with a working floppy drive
or the mischievous motivation to acquire one)
I’d excavate that too
and see what the sister who loved pink and flowers and bubble letters
held precious and private.

It was a time of obsolete technology that we can’t easily access now;
it was a time of opposite adolescences spent in baffled unfamiliar separation.

Doubtless there is some other historical repository
in the warren of my parents’ new basement
where I will find my own PRIVATE!!! files,
floppy disks, yes, and also CD-ROMs;
internal and external hard drives;
busted computers with maybe-salvageable memories; —

I am more interested in hers than mine
even though we both may have forgotten what is on our own.
Even though I could ask:
What did you-then think? About me? About your new school?
About buying pink gel pens and learning to write bubble letters?
About living in a house where privacy required warnings?

Who were you when I wasn’t looking?
Should I keep excavating? Can we?

[Prompt 17, Hour 17] Write a poem about a form of technology that is obsolete or is headed that way. The technology could just be referred to in passing, like a telephone booth, or it could be a CD that is the focal point of the poem. The degree of focus on the obsolete technology is up to you.