Skip to main content
 

by BRIAN CRONWALL

So, I called your cellphone,

left a message on your land-line,

texted, emailed, faxed,

sent a letter first class,

left a note on your car,

carved words on a park bench and a bamboo stalk,

had the message printed in Braille,

performed it in American Sign Language on YouTube,

tweeted a poem for you (#pleasepleaseplease),

tried to cut a 30-second PSA to air on local cable access,

approached ABC, CBS, NBC, BBC, CBC, CNN, MSNBC,

Fox, Al-Jazeera, Russian Today, The Food Channel, and every religious nextwork,

posted and scrolled through too many “Missed Connections” on Craigslist,

hired a small airplane to write across the sky,

talked to everyone in the checkout lines at Costco and WalMart,

remembered you and re-re-re-read all your old messages to me,

until, months later,

after I was declared competent to stand trial,

after the judge heard all the testimony and pronounced me guilty,

I now lie on my bunk in Cell 17 of Block B

and wonder if I really love you, if I ever did,

until lights out,

when I close my eyes

and hope to dream

I am ascending, gloriously above,

floating through clouds,

and never, never looking back.

Brian Cronwall is a retired English professor living on Kaua`i in Hawai`i. His work has been published in journals and anthologies in Hawai`i, Guam, the Continental United States, Australia, Japan, France, and the United Kingdom.

Comments are closed.