THE AUTHOR

We were going to

talk by phone

but she had to

finish her nails

first. So I waited,

patiently. I measured 

time in my mind

as a gloss

teased, stroke

after stroke,

slowly across

tiny cuticle screens,

where phosphors swam

to the surface

to make light. These were

the minutes I saw,

I counted. But no call

came. No message

either. Nails done,

yet? I wrote, texted, 

reaching across 
the void. Free to 

talk now? The phone was

no longer a phone,

a tablet, rather, to a false 

telepathy. Writing 

my grandfather’s
eulogy—deep in it,

she wrote back. Can’t

talk tonight. Then I

realized how prolific

she was, how

much she had

authored that evening:

a pedicure, a eulogy

and silence.

And that was why

I loved her, why

she was the light 
of my life that day.