I center myself to get in the head space to be able to speak with her
Meditation, deep breathing, a neutral om like that on a landline,
In the nebulous space between picking the phone up off the cradle and dialing the numbers
Do I push the buttons? Will she push mine?
I call her
“Hello.”
“How are you?”
“What’s new?”
The attempted connection struggles along
A dial-up modem trying to force a network meant to carry voices into the binary code of 0’s and 1’s that would carry data
The frequencies transmitting seem to be out of touch
The whirring and beeping and grinding a cacophony led by an absent-minded robotic conductor haphazardly twirling a slinky as a baton
The little engine that thought it could, couldn’t
The line drops
Error 774: The connection attempt failed because of a temporary failure. Try connecting again.