Let Me Count the Ways


We count the ways we love in kilobytes
across unfeeling networks of thin wires.
Our words, displayed onscreen in pixelled lights,
just flatten how we talk of our desires.
In love that's papered daily through the mail,
one gets some artifact that can be kept.
But email romance leaves no paper trail,
our contact through keystrokes at best inept:
I touch your fingers only as my own
pad urgently across the alphabet
while you, some miles away, aren't quite alone,
but pad my fingers back across the Net.
How do I love you? How make the distance better?
I count and recount every stricken letter.




Daryl L. Houston