Lay down your laptop
Turn off your phone
Let’s have no more text messages
no more emails
and no more goddamn Facebook!
Let’s touch.
I said,
Let’s touch.
And I don’t mean lintpicking.
I want to mess your hair and stroke your face and
grab you.
Let’s turn off the city lights
and let the dark be really dark,
not this yellow half-dark
Let’s watch the Milky Way sprawl across the black
in all its nuclear-fusion mystery
Wear your best suit
See a sharp barber
Polish your extremities
I’ll wear a black velvet dress tailored to my shape
A bow around my neck
Bare feet and a diamond anklet
And I’ll have my hair done, sparing no expense
We’ll steal a big stretch limo
with leather seats
— a black one, not a pimpy white one —
or maybe a horse-drawn carriage.
This time we drink all of the tequila or vodka
or whatever you’ve got.
This is not broadband.
I’ll show you broadband!
On the coldwarm leather
in the back of the limo
Among soft new grass
at the foot of a gravestone
On damp sand
in the black satin dark
with the ocean sighing beside us
if that’s
what it takes
to
connect.
(First published in Creatrix)