And on the receiver’s live air, the insistent hello
from someone who has refused to hang up, the plea
divorced from all name and form,
an argument’s last word splintering through the black pinpoints,
warped as the metal where the last dialer’s face floated
above square numbers, where
every voice is listed under code, like combinations
to an immense vault of wires.
Only static has figured all of them out.
I hear it like a safecracker’ stools thieving through connection,
if being invisible can be called connection.
Now it is silencing my answers