xaara

Think of a question you've never answered and answer it.

At midnight, Charles IMd me. "What's up?" he typed. "I haven't talked to you in a while."

I sat there, stared at my computer screen, tried to formulate a response. "Just got back from orchestra rehearsal," I typed, but my right pinky hesitated over the return key, instead migrated toward the backspace. He already knew about orchestra--I'd told him weeks before. "I'm finishing up my homework," I tried next, but again my pinky pressed backspace instead of enter; again my words disappeared into the ether.

Motionless, I watched the softly glowing monitor until Charles signed off.

Now, I think I know what I might have said. "I'm in love with the dying gasps of winter," I'd have begun, "and with the way snow looks under a streetlamp at night. I've started to find my calling in working with the kids at the school where I intern. I'm working on a sonnet, but I'm stuck on the last two iambs of the fifth line--would you take a look and see if you can help me out? What rhymes with love, anyway? Dove? Above? Glove? Shove? I'm glad you got a haircut--it looks nice in the pictures you sent. I hope you and your girlfriend are still getting along well. She's one of the best things that ever happened to you, you know. I was so proud of you when I heard you'd been accepted to Yale. I'm still proud of you now.

"It's late, and I have to get to bed. So I'll see you tomorrow, if this Internet thing we have can count as seeing.

"Goodnight."

And I'd have signed off, and fallen into bed, and sometime past one o'clock, I would have found solace in the sanctuary of my unassuming comforter.