millennial letters in the digital age | poem

poetry

we wrote to one another for years

long before email came along

and made ink feel impossible.

the letters then read sane, were considered.

a doctor sat with prescription pad

musing over which pill would cure dermatitis.

at the start of our exchange, we shared things:

indifference toward Saturday nights out

with the fit in crowd. monolith blonde curls

ripped denim

happy hour binges

blackout sex.

we enjoyed symbolism in poetry

a leaf that browns in pot plant

while two lovers sit apart at kitchen table

sun lost to shadows caused by sudden exit.

that sort of thing got the ink flowing.

we liked reading letters written by famous authors

Ginsberg to his father

Bukowski into the void.

in our letters

I admired their use of em dash

a tone that reflected a violence

they’d grown up with and then used to.

Ali meets Dickenson

defiant yet afraid.

we wrote in first person for days

until they became years

sometimes drunk or high or in tears over

nothing more than adolescence.

then email came along

a click of a button

a send and receive

ruined everything.

a digital tsunami birthed an instant need for gratification

acknowledgments of reception.

the things we had escaped through letters

were ate up by digital words.

when I think about them now

from afar

I miss the poise of pen in hand

what it once took to consider

each word

before spitting them out.