In Touch
April 19 2010


She is stuck in traffic
idling,
worrying time
the way she chews on pencils.
The soft give of wood
between sharp incisors,
flecks of yellow paint.

She clenches the wheel, fingers drumming,
right hand at 6
left near 12;
noon, or midnight — take your pick.
She slips off her shoes, wiggles her toes, sighs gratefully,
liberated from fashion.
She feels rough synthetic carpet
through panty hose
to-and-fro,
the static charge
slowly growing.

And phones,
to explain
excuse herself,
I imagine.

Cell towers triangulate,
electromagnetic waves
beam up to the ether, bounce right back
to me
by laser, electron, diaphragm,
vibrating the air
with her words
her voice
exactly.
A couple thousand miles
to the other side of town.

She keeps in touch,
her lungs, her lips, her tongue
whispering into my ear —
the drum
stretched to its breaking point,
anvil, hammer, stirrup,
to the auditory nerve
firing-off bursts of words.
Then idling
in long uncomfortable silences.
A perfect simulacrum
of her.

Why she left, suddenly,
before I was up
saying nothing.

Rush hour traffic
lurches, stops
bumpers locked
in her thrifty compact hatchback,
craning to see
in the crush
of grown-up cars and trucks.
Under an overpass
of rusting steel, concrete walls
interrupting us,
signal lost.

“Must be breaking-up”, she says
voice cracking
static loud enough to hurt.
“Sorry, too much traffic.”
. . . “Call back”, I send out
hopeful.

Her answer is still beaming out into space.
Probably halfway to Jupiter
by now.