I would call your phone sometimes
hoping the voice-mail message
at least meant you had been alive
recently enough to pay this month’s bill

When it started to ring
to one of those robots –
an IVR they call them
in the telephone industry – my
sure-shot measurement method
went bust

Text-Messaging wouldn’t do, either;
There isn’t even a robot to give
the common courtesy of a senseless
fleeting hope in the first place

but every now and then I’d get a word
or two, and so at least I knew that
someone was still using your
number

Then it was 2015

and somehow, the telephone slash camera
that I carry in my left-front pocket
started swapping stories with yours

Then, not just spare characters or
a pre-recorded speech, but real
actual photos would appear to me,
for only a moment, as if in a dream

Rather often, you are very nearly smiling

So now I am glad that, so far as my
millesimal view of your days can show,
you are well

but I wonder
if I had dreamt you,
actually,
all along