Dear Idealism,

I thought you died that time.

It was the way she said (        ), the look, the gesture, the inescapable what if.

How do you feel now, surrounded by so much silver—stainless

steel?

I lived in you.

I lived a 10% life.

Could not even smell what I was doing there.

When I was a child I played with a disconnected pale pink rotary telephone.

I read in stairwells, books under bridges.

I keep trying to be that small.