Someone Else – Dan Schell

I do not want your face
on my screen,
smiley jpegs on
cluttered desktop,
with someone else;
on a beach or boat
or cliff or trail;
skin browning,
smelling like a sheet
on a clothesline,

not thinking of me.

I do not want your posts
in my algorithm,
highlights of your life
splayed and gaping
like the rubbery mouth
of the catfish you caught
with someone else;
the codec of your laughter
distorted on my speaker,
as the fish flops across
the boat’s sand-grit deck;

I was probably busy, anyway.

I do not want to accept
your friend request,
because what kind of friend
would I be, lurking
across your life like a
party-crasher,
cyber voyeur,
clicking every picture
of you and someone else?

My data plan would fulminate.

I do not want to hear the ping
of your message
unless it’s an invitation,
a stretched hand into the
unknown, furtive and fallow,
free of someone else;
the thought into the touch
of the heart laid bare,
rising to the occasion;
the click of your keyboard
only a whispering memory
to someone else.

Published in Collected Poems, 2016