Love in the Age of Instant

Gaggle of teens, noisy around the coffee shop,
necks jabbed forward over those almighty phones —

from here, they might be looking for crumbs
on the sidewalk or peering into a fathomless well.

I think I remember being anxious-young like that—
the nearly school-out, summer and heading-away

kind of young that’s prone to heated crushes
landing here or landing there. Fixations

that with no encouragement whatsoever morphed
through June, July, into overblown obsessions, exhausting

to house in your body. I remember waiting
in the limbo afternoons of August, all energy

drained from summer. How I died
a bit each afternoon when the mail truck lumbered

down the shoulder of the road, leaving me empty-handed
and baffled. It was short and sharp, my pain -

the length of time it takes to fan
a handful of envelopes. I'd reopen

that clean wound the next day and the next
till school, new shoes - whatever comes that hauls us up
for air.

So, you have to wonder how they do it -
these young lovers - expending themselves still

on behalf of the wrong people and lost causes.
But so much more pitiable than we -

hearts bent over their dark fortune cards
that reach up into the universe and return nothing.

It must be unbearably sad, to bow over the little icons,
stab, stab at Send and Receive, IM, Text-message, Reply...

over and over - unloved anew
every second or two.