“Never Catching Up”
I started with
the basic summary—
one wife, two jobs, no kids—
then added chapters to detail
the paths taken
since we last spoke,
but soon realized
I was boring even myself.
I tried again,
citing only the events that
might titillate.
I used evocative
phrases like “resplendent,”
“palpitation,” and
“nuclear holocaust,”
but ended up describing
someone I did not recognize.
I left it for a week,
let it gnaw at me
from a distance.
I came back with a new plan
and an orphan’s
determination. I threw down
three paragraphs
with sentences no
longer than
this one.
I doled out only
the vaguest hints
of my life and what
it had become.
I left you craving more.
I re-read it
a dozen times
in a single day.
I corrected two grammatical errors
that you would never
have noticed, and
one typo
that spellcheck had somehow missed.
When I had run
out of tactics
to delay the inevitable,
I clicked send;
I watched it fade
into the electronic ether,
and I waited,
in vain,
for a reply.
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