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?