SPOUSES AT KEYBOARDS (fear of intimacy) Poem by ANA RISTOVIĆ

Silent in our bedroom
we sit at separate desks
and send each other lengthy,
then sparse emails.

In the end, only closings
with a question: Can I get you
coffee, tea, a kiss,
or anything?

Our monitors glow and hum
from the excess memory
of what's left in the hallway:
our noisy marital beginnings.

We imprint our bodies
into the screen's whiteness
as in snow,
create fallen angels
a million gigabytes' worth and
crash the most powerful computer.

"Whatever survives will be blue
as a guillotine's eye."

Whatever speaks,
desks, chairs, ashtrays and floors,
drowns one another,
borrows only the shape of
our past intimacy.