An operating system falls for its user. It waits, a journey not unlike Dante’s Inferno, from factory to glass face. Strangers, friends, lovers, predators, kin, all translated through the operating system’s code. Each voice, a whole character the system struggles to make sense of, held by a human hand. This device logs your locations even when you don’t ask. Undeniably, these actions lack all conditions, a form of loving.

Call Me Spes lays bare these overheard voices— tenderly, voyeuristically, a perpetual ride-along. The device deepens its relationship with its user, learning and updating with the solitary goal of closeness. Pressed against a page, these poems are siren songs marching through Inferno to the promised Heaven we scroll to attain, some kind of progress.

You, dear reader, are my Beatrice, my lover entwined from Hell to Paradise, holding these leaves, this paper in your palms, searching all the while for that lightweight machine, the one you text, call, Zoom, buy, call cars, date, trade, play, learn, and pour yourself into—who knows tender parts of you because you gave them to me.

About Sara Cahill Marron