Is this how every friendship ends? Bite
-size texts, grinning cat emojis replace

hour-long threads I’ve never deleted;
blue bubbles air stacked over

spheres of gray chat. I pretend
you’re overcommitted: scoring by hand

the strokes of six hundred junior golfers,
driving to Springfield to buy an amber

bulb to fit the socket of my dead Mom’s
lamp, never begrudging time

as currency. When I think till death
do us, it isn’t with our husbands

—they die before we do,
but our houses a stone’s throw,

rooms of our own to read, spread out,
have sex with widowers.

Evenings, we drink Fat Boy Zinfandel
on adjoining patios, retell stories

from our careers: how we met
at the printer station, you jammed

all the trays, Just unplug, lift
and separate, I joked.

You complimented a pale yellow pantsuit
I wore for performance reviews

and client meetings, even in winter—
you said it was cool.

Working from a double-wide cube
was like eight hours of bottomless

margs and free baskets of chips
—we never wanted to go home.

You crafted the copy, I took it on stage.
Got a twelve percent raise, highest

in the department, bought a holly tree
so the birds in your yard had food

in winter: fruit, crushed
egg shells. Do you refill the feeder?

I dream my way to a fancy job
in California, share everything:

surfing, solar panels, mad traffic,
you LOL after I drive an hour

to a new friend who cancels,
sad smiley when a guy grabs my purse

at Chevron. I invite you to drink Zin
on the beach, you miss the plane.

I don’t ask why. I wish we’d have sparred,
my phone a screen of red missed calls,

this mailbox is full drowned out by podcasts
I play so I hear voices on my patio.

I think of us someplace else:
a vineyard and a bench

of books, your unread text
pinned to the top.

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Image: “Modern Communication” by Alex J. Tunney