Telephone

It rang last night, breaking the silence that caressed my simple sleep. That silence I have come to know in your absence has made me weak. I find no comfort in your name on the screen; only questions. The questions are yelled out, blurted out – one screams, "Should I answer?"  I find no comfort in the thought of your voice, speaking sweetly from the other side. You crawl to me like a child. You know I feel less for you now more than ever, and yet you ask me how I am. I want to scream, "I'm fine, you f*****g b*****d!" There is no release from my frustration -- it remains deep within, left to simmer and spit at the very body that contains it. My heart is numb. You've left me to rot, a stale lump of unrequitted love. And now your attempts to resurrect me from my coma find resistance in my condition.

Hang up, it's over, it's only a telephone with a voice on the other end. The phone is no comfort to me, it brings worries I had not before: it brings you to me and places our distance in space only further apart, separating me from you. I want to be near you, but the promise of the telephone call allows you to be further and further away from me. I hate the telephone. I hate it --  more than I hate you. It is only a device and you are the master of its uses. You breathe like me, you feel like me, un-alike in how one feels for the other, un-alike in the importance we place on the telephone. I hate the telephone; I need the telephone, because I hate you. It is a symbol of my weakness – a need for love and tenderness. The telephone can attempt at neither.

It is my substitute for you.

My anxiety falls onto it.
 
You are free from the burden of me, because the telephone bears it all.