The Terms of Service for the Last Child

At eleven, the city updated itself.
No one asked the children.
The swings were lifted into the cloud,
where they keep ascending
without a body to prove it.

I found my old marbles
in the mouth of a parking meter—
three blue planets, one with a crack
that showed the light was only
a coin refusing to be spent.

Across the dry beach, the lighthouse
had been trained to blink in Morse
for things that no longer had water.
Every blink deleted a wave.
Every wave returned as an invoice
with my childhood's address.

Two girls walked past carrying robots
with the heart-icons prised off their chests,
red diodes rehearsing a pulse.
They taught them the approved words:
mother, weather, exit, please.
Still, each machine said salt.

At the edge of town, a scarecrow
wore my school shirt.
Its sleeves had learned my arms.
Its wooden hands kept opening
whenever a motorbike passed:
not a wave—
the old reflex of being carried home.

Then the adults began speaking
in passwords. I learned the grammar.
We swallowed our names together
and grew a second mouth for code.
The sky, which had once been
a place to lose a ball in,
lowered its ceiling.

I have kept one thing:
a ring of gold salt in the cuff.
At night it warms.
At night it logs me in
under the name I cannot keep.
Something small on the other side
keeps trying the door
with a hand made of weather.