Connect

There are many ways I now
know to reach out to you
The yellow pages of letters we
had once exchanged are brittle

The huge landlines where the
numbers had to be dialled in
semicircles, are replaced by
flashy screens of smart phones

There are a number of messengers
to exchange disoriented pings
Or what we call applications to
have seamless audio and video calls

Phone service providers have lucrative
deals for unlimited calls and data
Yet, we still have to deal with
limited time and limited love

The buzz and series of wild texts
hover all around us, a little more
is lost in chats than gained

Screens pop up everywhere,
even run into my dreams
Strangely you are not a person
in it, but a ‘handle’ on a page

I text you in my sleep with
my random eye moments
In my dream you are typing, still
typing and it’s no longer a dream

I wake up to a ping where you
respond ‘ok’ to a message, I had
sent about a hundred years ago

There may be ten dozen ways
of interacting with you now, but
we still haven’t learnt to connect

Mitra Samal is from Bhubaneswar, India. She mostly writes poems and occasionally pens down stories. She is a software consultant with a passion for both technology and literature. Her poems have been published in Poetry Society India, Muse India, Borderless Journal, Dissident Voice and The Chakkar among others. Her stories have found place in Spillwords, The Blahksheep and Different Truths so far. She is also an avid reader and a Toastmaster who loves to speak her heart out. Mitra can be reached at @am_mitrasamal on Instagram. Read other articles by Mitra.