I lost my cellphone then
on a sultry June night.
I was quite claustrophobic
in a pair of midnight jeans
that I wore only so you
would not think me bohemian.
I did not mean to forget it there,
but I was only making sure that
your lips were okay in that heat.

You saw me in a pair of cool khakis
on every midnight in that fevered summer
and you didn't care much, you said,
you wanted me comfortable, you said
because I ground words for long hours of the day
and for longer hours at night to keep you.

That struggle was like singing songs to an Angel
to make her forget the choirs of Heaven,
it does not matter how beautiful are
the slender cracks in the human spirit
which are slivers of the infinite grace of a love
that is common as air in that Kingdom.
To such a creature, surely,
even the whole world would not be enough.

A man with nothing is unequal to the contest, and
a new cellphone enters my life,
to replace the one I lost months ago,
but I have no one left to speak to.
The world smiles as if to say, here's a toffee,
it really is too bad that you've been starving,
and here is a consolation prize you cannot eat.
Here is something that cannot sustain.

What I came to understand was that we are
a line drawn between only two points,
a string taut from a stationary niche
to a pencil desperate to escape the leash-
the string snaps and all that is left
is the thirst of entropy too long bereft,
a scratched scar leading off the page,
but circles in peace, and others in rage,
in obsession, and in indifference,
gibberish as a poet's language
to represent what once made sense.