I’ve been meaning to call you for weeks now,
Bob Rasa, strung up on the dry mouth anti-
Pavlovian hooks of your name in casual
conversation around time. I don’t call, of
course, not with this roiling blood between
us, swirling to fill each sulcus with dread
that you surely must feel too when you think
of me, you must. For all of the ingenious
design, these cold translations of vibrating
molecules to electricity, I am confident
the earpiece would have nothing but poignant
crackles for me, a wall unscaleable once
erected. And worse still, if somehow you
have forgotten the names of the atoms that
separate us, if the forgiveness comes easy?
Perhaps you and I would just talk on the phone
for hours, like nothing had changed, like we
were more than wandering auditory phantoms,
and really what would the point of all that be?