• i made a collect call to your sympathy but it's not accepting the charges and you're playing "idon'tcares" for a dial tone as my fingers stumble, searching for the right numbers to make you listen.

    but i can only leave so many messages on your [un]answering machine before i lose my voice altogether so that i'm left rasping out awkward silences that fill the notches of your ribcage leaving that subtle beat that begs to get out. completely trapped behind electrostatic bones and it's in the emptiness of your response that i realize our love has been disconnected.

    [your veins are telephone wires but they don't reach your heart]

    and we're using these phones since we hate to be close enough to hear that way our breathing patterns clash so you put an ocean between us which is swimming with "i'll-miss-yous" and "distance-makes-the-heart-grow-fonders."

    [or perhaps, it's like "fondness-makes-the-heart-grow-distant" since love feels more than just a few thousand miles away.]

    and the cracks between my fingers have never been emptier even as the spinning second hand begs for my open palm but time isn't meant for holding and it's doing nothing to mend my breaking heart.

    [so your second cliche of the day is wrong too: time doesn't heal any wounds.]

    all this distance has torn us more than just miles apart; its ripped iloveyous in half and forevers have been shredded like sheets of paper between absent-minded fingers on transatlantic flights to "i-love-you-for-never" and now you're living in tomorrow fiftyfourhundred minutes into my future. and i'm nothing but the past tense to your present. so in these ever-tiring conversations taped from broken fingers i've noticed that you started ending everything to do with me in an -ed.

    [you've turned into disguised goodnights that are really goodbyes and i-loved-yous instead of i-still-dos,]

    the problem is that i replaced the "i" in "live" with an "o" so that i can't see without you; so that "i" don't even exist without you and what's worse is i'm seven digits and twenty-five cents short of calling you and you wouldn't answer anyways.

    [you've told me that i beg the question but all i've ever wanted was eight letters in exchange for pushing those seven numbers.]