What happens to a digital object defined? ((Inspired by Langston Hughes’s “A Dream Deferred” and a spirited conversation in the office today.))

Does its identifier dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or its relationships fester like a sore–
And then run?
Do its bits rot like meat?
Or become overwritten–
like some throw-away sheet?

Maybe its metadata just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it fade into code?