Distance Poem by Patti Masterman

You're always losing your phone
Or else you're over your monthly limit;
Your laptops undone, the plug left behind
Somewhere again, for the tenth time
Friends loaner plugs gone missing as well
You've decided to just forego phones
And use the schools computers
Though it's a short jog through sloshing fields
On a long day when I can never find you
In the wet basin where you now live
And a new pox has broken out over half the world
Threatening to engulf the other half
Every moment new mountains trying to spring up between us
Like hives popping out on a bee sting
To sunder our vulnerable linkage hinged by blood
And like an old dog on a familiar trail
I keep returning to your bedroom
Even though I know you're not there
And the past keeps beckoning, one step behind
Like a song on the radio that I used to sing along to
With a verse that never really rhymed.