I am holding a rectangular object
made of glass and aluminum.
It weighs exactly one hundred and seventy-four grams.
*
Inside this casing, there is a list of four hundred names.
Eleven of these people are dead.
I know they are dead
because I attended their funerals
or I was told about their deaths
by other people on this list.
*
I have not deleted their contact information.
I can see the specific arrangement of letters
that forms their names.
*
If I were to press my finger against the screen,
the device would attempt to establish a connection.
It would send a signal to a cellular tower.
The signal would travel to a server
and then to a handset
that is currently sitting in a drawer
or has been recycled into new components
for a different machine.
*
The call would not be answered.
There is no functioning vibrating motor to alert anyone.
There is no eardrum on the other end
to receive the sound waves.
*
I am keeping these names
because they are the only physical evidence I have
that these people once occupied a space next to me.
*
Their names are stored as binary code.
Zeros and ones etched into a flash memory chip
smaller than my fingernail.
*
The chip does not care if the person is breathing.
It only cares about the electrical charge required to maintain the data.
*
I spend three minutes looking at a name.
The person died in 2019.
*
The phone I used to call them in 2019 is gone,
but the data has been migrated three times
to this specific piece of hardware.
*
I am carrying the dead in my pocket
as a collection of stable electrons.
*
The concern is the permanence of the record
compared to the fragility of the body.
*
The concern is that I am talking to a piece of glass
about people who can no longer hear me.
About the Creator
Tim Carmichael
I am an Appalachian poet and cookbook author. I write about rural life, family, and the places I grew up around. My poetry and essays have appeared in Beautiful and Brutal Things, My latest book. Check it out on Amazon
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More stories from Tim Carmichael and writers in Poets and other communities.
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By Gregory Paytona day ago in Fiction
Comments (2)
Oooh, this is excellent writing. Somber. A powerful thought you’ve put to poetry here, painful but compelling. Word choice was great too, the technological terms helped the whole thing feel simultaneously close up and far distant. I’ve sometimes thought about how people who have died might still have an online “presence” on social media. But what you’re describing here is so much more personal. There’s a sense of aching to this writing. Great work. The last couple lines hit really hard, and stand as a strong reminder that time might make things better but grief never really disappears completely, and it’s still natural to miss people who have gone. Sorry for your losses Tim. I admire you for writing with such depth on a subject that can’t have been comfortable.
I thought I was the only one who ever thought about this. I keep my social media friends list small. So small, I am starting to realize more of them are dead than alive and it's sad. Loved your piece.