PIXELS

Play the game. Press plastic buttons.
A car moves, turns, crashes.
No engine, heat, or risk,
only light arranged until motion appears.

Pixels.
Obedient, lifeless, convincing.

Then I step outside.

My wife laughs. A child tells a story
that wanders before it arrives. We drive.
Steel and glass, flesh and food—
molecules arranged, I’m told.
All true. But not all that is.

No pixel has loved or waited in fear, 
known the weight of another’s presence,
or the terror of its absence.
Reduction explains the parts
and calls the whole excess.

The screen goes dark. Nothing mourns.
We end, and something tears.
God did more than arrange matter.
He spoke, and He breathed.
Sons and daughters, seen and named.

We are not pixels mistaken for meaning.
We are alive, and that life is no illusion.