Poetry: Never Catching Up

“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.