measuring lines

The phone turns to kilometers

Kilometers not longer than the distance between words

Words pile up like carcasses after a massacre

But, there is no buzzing of the bees

Only silence

With the stench of some base frequency audible at times

Like a distant loudspeaker

Meant to reach more people than interested

I open and close drawers

Organizing things in a neat order

Even the photo albums

Where photos are laden with moisture behind cellophane

Rereading books for underlined words

Hoping to label each drawer with them

But everything is a road

Marked by kilometers

Even the database of arguments and poetry

Has a ravine in between

Probably just the difference of width

Between the left and right arm’s circumference

Maybe it is just the probability

Of someone else answering the phone

Other than the intended

The kilometers between the phone and me shrink sometimes

But the voices have the ambience of large halls

Seething with distance

All the high frequencies get lost in transmission

There’s only the muffled vibration

But, it is apparent that no matter what the unitary conversion

Space and time have an unstable equation

The markers are all fudged

There remains mere displacement

Kilometers without any significance

All that matters is that even though

Earlier it took more time to reach

With the coming of the faster line

The distance only increased

And the phone fell short in every bit

The only markers lie

In the twitch of a muscle

At the hint of a familiar scent

Or the pit that appears in the belly

If its depth can be measured

We can know how much it really was

The distance between the two voices on the phone