This piece laments the loss of privacy in our lives. When I first considered this topic, I was struck by how we are constantly surrounded by digital noise, making it nearly impossible to find a moment of true solitude.

Siri and Alexa respond readily even when you whisper their names at four in the morning. The topic you talked to your friend about for thirty minutes pops up as an advertisement on Instagram. Your search history becomes a permanent cyber footprint the second you hit search. Your watch history meticulously tracks your preferences, using an algorithm to shape your future the moment you click the recommended video. Every minor detail of your life gets stored in the form of cookies, which we must voluntarily accept just to go about our daily tasks. As we live in a world devoid of privacy, we are no longer shocked when our private information gets leaked to the dark web—we just change the password. Repeat.

I have begun to miss the past I never got to live. The old days where we did not have technology, when we could keep ourselves to ourselves, when we could choose privacy. This poem is devoted to that forgotten virtue of solitude.