Internet Ghosts Poem by L C Vieira

You don't understand
why he doesn't write
or call or talk to you
when just last week
he wrote nine times a day
and laughed and joked with you

How can you know
when he has known
you in all your words -
now suddenly gone
and you're left here
reading between the lines

Did you do something
say something
too much too soon too free?
Were you far more
- and he much less
to tell you where it went?

Are you now someone he deletes
without response?
You're left here blindly reaching out
struggling for a glimpse,
your phantom friend eluding you

Was it just last week?
You were so happy,
that invisible ghost across the sea
fishing with phrases so close by
until you wanted more

Were you real to him
without a face -
You, full of his reality -
so full the hole is bigger now
without a word from him?

(2002)