Some will choose to scroll Instagram.

And soon they land upon an influencer. She, too, is posed at an angle, the body turned just so, her head tilted toward the camera with practiced ease. Her dress is not of mourning but of sponsored fabric, tagged helpfully below the post, available for purchase with a discount code. A ring light, not sunlight, gives her skin its glow. The veil is gone, replaced by a spray tan and contouring powder.

Her eyes, wide and exaggerated, shine not with moisture but with the gloss of editing filters. The lashes are long, but each one uniform, machine-made, identical. The brows are drawn too, inked, plucked, penciled, until not a stray hair remains. The nose, slimmed by ai, is all angle without air. The mouth curves into a smile, the same smile found on a thousand other accounts, seductive, trying to lure in the male audience, rehearsed and smoothed until it has no mystery at all. The cheeks glow, with the ray of product placement. Money, or the aspiration of money.

If you stare for an hour, there is no pulse in the throat, only the faint flicker of the screen refreshing itself, new likes tallying, empty, maybe contrived. Nothing deepens with time; everything grows thinner the longer you look. The work does not make a master tremble, it makes you weary.

Scroll on Soldier.

Scroll on.