Love by whatsapp

I watch her through a lens, a voyeur of my own heartbreak. My studio in Los Angeles is a tomb of concrete and ozone, the only heat radiating from the server rack that keeps me tethered to a Parisian apartment four thousand miles away. The hum of the cooling fans is the heartbeat of this room, a mechanical substitute for the life I used to lead. I haven't turned the lights on in two days; the blue glow of the triple-monitor setup is enough to etch the outlines of my desk, my empty coffee mugs, and the mounting stack of unopened mail into the dark.