COMES IN BITS AND BYTES

He was plump in the morning, and I was
angling toward that softness he hated to show,
to be. Everything we needed, almost, moved
through electricity--ours--or by a funky new
correspondence born of the information age that sent
the conversation to shorthand during the day.
Many hurried misspellings were our destiny, and
cigarettes were the true love we shared, up
in smoke, up in smoke. Try
hanging on to that,
after he puts it to my lips with care,
his spittle moist on the rim of it,
on the rim of me. Closer, I said,
and softer, but no, not yet. Who was
ever patient with desire, with the billion
facts available at the tap of a finger? That's true
sympathy, via our singular millennium. Trace
his belly, send more e-mail in the afternoon,
know that the world is round and usually
rounds us home with it.
Wait.

By Alexis Quinlan

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