he stood still long enough for the signal to confuse him with a map of somewhere else

face traced in coordinates,
contours drawn by carrier wave.
red for landmass,
blue for drift.
his gaze = a fixed longitude.
self.identity = "composite atlas"
self.movement = "slow render"
self.border = "negotiated"

pixels fall like rain,
gather like memory.
each point a location,
each location a fragment of him.
"I didn’t travel,"
he said,
"the world rendered on me."
phosphor storms break along his jaw.
continents flicker over cheekbone terrain.
let map = merge("face", "planet", {mode: "interlace"})

the background?
deep space.
or maybe just empty signal.