Tuesday, May 15, 2012

The Letter I Was Too Lazy to Write



the letter i was too lazy to write said
i’m at the point again of wanting
 to turn off my cell phone
to turn my back on texting
to refuse to hear the phone’s pings

everyone insists texting, like email,
is quick time, almost real time
especially if it’s globe to globe smart to smart sun to sun
they remind like a nagging never-can-do-wrong mother
you need that phone for emergencies
& anyways (oh, how I detest that extra “s” after the “y” on “anyway”)
the wifi signal is as rapid as your blinking eye

i ruined two, three phones since '03
& each time got a handy secondhand
that would do the job of instant connect
i reconstructed my directory
but each time i did, oh woe,
i lost what i truly wanted to keep
not the vital practical life-or-death contacts
but the messages
that reminded me where i was
on a special christmas morning when
my happily dysfunctional family,
the sort afflicted with the optimism bias,
was together in one place
or where i was on another day when i was ill
& again near the edge of despair
when i was soaked with rain & stranded
in a remote dark part of myself
when i was in a bus & the conductor fed a DVD
of a B movie called “the losers”
at an ungodly time when all i had were
jingling coins in my purse & an ingrained faith
that this situation will pass

ahhh those messages were messengers
from the abyss in the sky
somewhere in one of those roving satellites
an autobot has read how
an earth woman early today texted
“good a.m. are we on for 10 a.m. mtg 2day?”

the letter i was too lazy to write
will tell you i’ll have none of that
for the meantime
i’m at an alternative spa 
for the techno-weary
having my brain re-wired
into improving the sprawling penmanship
that has increasingly lost its legibility

two months ago a student came up to tell me
with only the honesty a child can muster
“teach, your handwriting is like
a doctor’s prescription”

the time to listen more to myself think has come
the time for longer pauses has arrived

letters allow for lengthy pauses 

 

not measured in quick time


before the ballpoint pen resumes

its up-down movement across a page


how silly i was to imagine a text
or even an email, no matter how drenched
in emotion, can replace that?

from hereon
you’re gonna hear from me
but give it a waiting time of two weeks

~ Babeth Lolarga
May 15, 2012
6:22 a.m.
Photo of flowers and notebook from the WorldWideWeb.

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