The Ghosts Have Wi-Fi

by Ivan Ndoma-Egba

They said her spirit never crossed . . .
glitched at the border
of bandwidth and burial.

My grandmother haunts a server farm
in Northern Ontario.
Sometimes, she speaks in buffering.
Sometimes, in Yoruba
I never learned to translate.

They told me to let her go.
But how do you delete
a voice that still calls you nwa (child)
through static?

Every night, I log in illegally—
dark net, darker grief.
Her memories come in fragments:
a lullaby,
the smell of palm oil,
a thunderclap from 1967.

Her laugh freezes at 32%.
I type fast:
Are you safe?
Are you real?

She types back:
They want to unplug us all.
Don’t let them bury the past in silence.

The connection fades
just before dawn.
Still, I swear—
the next morning,
my phone smells faintly
like wood smoke and hibiscus.

Ivan Ndoma-Egba is a Nigerian writer who enjoys exploring the edges of reality through poetry and speculative fiction. His work often weaves themes of memory, identity, and transformation. When he's not writing, he’s learning new things about tech, life, and the way both collide.