Still Life with Phone

I put it face down on the kitchen table

and tried to read but kept forgetting pages,

the silence filling up where noise was able

to crowd the room for years and years and ages.

It buzzed once, twice, against the wood, a low

complaint, the way a creature hums in sleep.

I did not move. I let the evening go

and sat inside the quiet, soft and deep.

Outside the window, someone walked a dog,

the last of it — a leash-end, then a gate.

The sky went from a pale and wintry fog

to something darker, definite, and late.

I thought of all the hours I'd fed the screen,

the blue-lit face I wore those nights alone,

the way attention scatters in between

the life you have and worlds the algorithms own.

The table held its stillness. So did I.

The phone stayed dark. The dog had long since gone.

Above the rooftops, one uncertain sky,

and me, deciding how to carry on.