I want to send this before midnight, 
but my internet’s been cutting out. 
The router and modem blink red and white—
little sparks and flickers—a Christmas 
tree beneath my desk. My office is lit up 
like an alien spaceship—the glow 
and jerking light on the dashboard 
of a doomed flight. I’m not a luddite—
I restart, unplug, push the reset button, 
but every email to you goes unsent.
 
Non-violent communication—now called
compassionate communication—I studied
during marriage counseling with my ex.
Those techniques didn’t work then, or now. 
Our attempts at poetry, love, and space
exploration failed. Oh well. I hope you’re next 
to a fireplace holding someone close,
ignoring the computer and phone, sipping
on hot chocolate with marshmallows. 
I can’t return. I trip on wires, things go blast,
and my responses are never opened. 
 
Maybe my emails have been abducted. You too. 
Dozens of men—frozen in vats—stand
in a lab awaiting release. The good news: 
I don’t see you there. We weren’t serious 
enough to morph into monster. I want to be 
the one who got away, but that’s not true.
We are friends. I wish I could erase the rest. 
If I did that, there would be no poems, no book.
No, I want to write you. 
 
We have the same keyboard, all letters 
in the same order, the same cursor—
the black line pulsating like the burn 
on the eye after the camera’s flash, 
a blinking yield sign at the train tracks, 
the heart monitor reporting the body’s rhythm, 
the same 20-weight, standard bright 
multipurpose paper (for everyday performance), 
and the same brand printer that jams 
when fed too much at once, yet we arrive 
to the table with such different takes. 
I’m one-syllable words—dark, breast, rope, 
kiss, drench, quench. Your diction’s higher 
and you never get undressed. I guess art 
does replicate life. I hit send. You delete. 

Cat Dixon