Hey Mommy?

When I type bat instead of cat, do the letters get mad at me?

Is it a vacation, a retirement to the land far away,
full of words I’ll never get to know,
or did I send them away to crumble into pixels?

Is that forgotten apology chopped up
into little pieces in the back of the computer,
a plastic box under the harddrive
that Daddy gets to clean out
when he refills the printer ink?

I want to read the book filled with all the lost letters,
the one where my fourth-grade book report
comes after the job application you were never qualified for,
but just before the neighbor’s college essay,
deleted so his own Mommy could help him.

Hey Mommy?

Can I ever check on them?

I hope they turn into a book about superpowers.

I’d be sad if these keys turned into nothing more
than a scrapped poem or a forgotten apology.

Hey Mommy?

I miss the forgotten letters.

Do you think they ever miss me?