Benign

We are talking again.No, not exactly talking. 

After a long silence 

we are exchanging e-mails.

Her name seems familiar 

yet strange in my in-box. 

Predictable but somehow alien, 

disconnected, out of time and out-of-place. 

Yet my phone was once alive with her – 

buzzing with long, longing phone calls, 

humming with text upon text,

Now it makes a single, anonymous note, 

no different from the correspondence of others, 

or the facebook notifications, or the twitter alerts.

The letters of her name beneath my fingers 

are like empty shells stripped of everything 

they once signified. 

They no longer represent the passion, 

the desire, the hunger, 

the love that once electrified each often-chanted, 

beloved, cherished syllable.

Their power has gone. 

They are benign, safe, neutral.It is past. Over.
Today she suggested meeting…