In a utopian world online,
emotions arrive in cinematic light \u2013
OTT dreams, softly-scripted care,
every feeling framed just right.
Pain has background music there,
tears fall slow, beautifully timed,
even heartbreak looks poetic
when edited by the mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The heart finds warmth in glowing screens,
a safe illusion, clean and kind,
where words hold you without bruises
and silence doesn\u2019t scream unkind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But reality has no filters \u2013
violence lives in ordinary days.
It makes the body small and careful,
teaches fear in brutal ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here, vulnerability is dangerous,
softness costs, trust bleeds thin.
The mind builds walls for survival
while the heart keeps fighting in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Online, heart and mind make peace \u2013
they sit together, gently healed.
Offline, they stand on opposite sides,
one afraid, one refusing to yield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The heart still hopes to be understood,
the mind already knows the cost.
Between comfort streamed in pixels
and real-world harm, hope gets lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, we escape into the surreal \u2013
where care is easy, pain is styled
because reality punishes tenderness
and leaves the vulnerable undefended, exiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cover image by Abhishek Chadha<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The heart finds warmth in glowing screens<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":29025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5151,3401],"tags":[5168,5164,66,5160,5165,5166,121,2795,26,616,1001,71,5161,5163,48,4791,99,25,2310,35,5167,5162],"class_list":{"0":"post-29024","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-digital-intimacies-and-sexuality","8":"category-fiction-poetry","9":"tag-algorithm","10":"tag-curated-identity","11":"tag-desire","12":"tag-digital-intimacy","13":"tag-digital-utopia","14":"tag-emotional-performance-online","15":"tag-feminism","16":"tag-feminist-internet","17":"tag-gender","18":"tag-intimacy","19":"tag-lgbtqia","20":"tag-love","21":"tag-online-emotions","22":"tag-ott-aesthetics","23":"tag-pleasure","24":"tag-queer-poetry","25":"tag-relationships","26":"tag-sexualities","27":"tag-sisa-spaces","28":"tag-social-media","29":"tag-social-media-feelings","30":"tag-streaming"},"menu_order":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29024"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29073,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29024\/revisions\/29073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}