The Case of the Missing White Case

To the One Who Lost Me,

I am losing power. My insides are empty. I am cold. I cannot call to you, though the trace of your DNA still lines my grooves. Gummy, grimy, dirty against the smooth white. Opaque white, like the delicate curves and sinew of your ears—the thicker cartilage where the light doesn’t shine through—not the thin, translucent flesh that bore pink, pearlescent veins to their scalloped edge like squiggled lines from a cipher to crack. Like spindly seismic cracks in sidewalks lifted by giant oak roots beneath.

I was lost last Thursday. You drank a whole bottle of Apothic Wine (TM) on the deck while the rest of the house slept inside. The loving family that you desperately need to escape sometimes. Oftentimes, lately. I am small, that is true. Easy to lose. It was dark, beneath just the stars with your wine. A moonless night. There you discovered a new song that moved you: you listened to it over and again, in that obsessive, stemming way. Replaying and resetting that button in your brain, that alluring cocktail of dopamine, oxytocin and norepinephrine that accompanies novelty and music. So much ecstatic joy that your neck and jaw unhinged and your left hand brushed the wine glass off the arm of the orange Adirondack chair. The glass scattered to shards.

I was made in a foreign land. A land of tropical rains, giant pythons and lemongrass fields. I was made under cramped, mechanical heat. I was made under the certain toil of foreign hands, sweat gliding palms and quick, nimble fingers. Unlike yours, thick and cool, the fingers slow, ringed with metal and stone.

The cold, distant stars are foreign. As foreign as the pines, though I have grown to know them. You would place me in your pocket, warm against your skin. You felt the blood course as you walked, free, alive in the world, with a secret world playing all for you, inspiring your thoughts.

You took me to foreign lands, on giant canisters in the sky, as cloud light played across my face.

You took me on jogs to the river, sprinting parallel along its banks, boots thwarting trail rocks as still turtles sunned themselves on boulders jutting up from carousing currents.

You took me on walks through the forest at dusk as the bard owls called above.

You sat with me with your quiet musings, a micro biome like a lidded terrarium, closed and clammed to others and their worlds.

Conspiracies and hypotheticals abound. Perhaps I fell out of your pocket, outside, that fateful night. Perhaps the possum stole me to decorate her den under the deck’s splintered boards. Perhaps the mated red-tailed hawks took me to line their nest, in anticipation of spring.

Perhaps I fell out when you returned inside and the two young cats found me, batted me under heavy furniture, inaccessible. Young Sherlock and Dr. Watson toying with you, creating more mysteries than they solve, with wild feline hands scampering. Perhaps a child found me on the street the morning after you took that drunken walk, after I fell from your pocket to the asphalt; their hopeful tween face falling when they opened my magnetic hinges to find me void.

A child who certainly would not remember the days of old. The days before internet, the analog days. You remember them. It is told that in those days—the recent past—music was heard from single tapes or discs connected by cords to large headsets that fit over the ears. That is, if recorded music was to be carried around. Even as the single tapes or discs changed to digital rectangular boxes—ones that could hold more music or audio—they were still connected by the long cords, the large headsets. Clunky, unwieldy, hazardous.

Conspiracies abound. I imagine your paranoia. That I am close. You have retraced your steps many times, both inside and outside. You think I couldn’t be far, because you hadn’t gone far, only to the end of the street and back. You think of all the small nooks and closets of the house, the crawl space attic above the bedroom—you fear that someone could be hiding in the house. I imagine these thoughts intrude—especially while your husband is away on business—while you try to sleep at night. You think of the bedroom closet doors with their weak, magnetic hinges that open ever so slightly at night as the house settles. Magnetic hinges unlike mine: strong, sleek, durable yet facile to the touch of opening fingers. The closet doors so near to the Sharper Image charging outlet (TM) where you would place me before sleep. Perhaps you picture a strange intruder lurking behind said closet doors to grab me with grubby, holed-gloved hands.

When you first received me in the mail, unboxing the large brown box—pulling out the brown paper to find the smaller white box inside—you opened that little white box and found me, a new freedom. A new freedom of movement and sound.

I am replaceable. We both know this. Still, I picture you now, in the interim—with cords attached again. A thin white rope tying you to your rectangular machine, that microprocessing machine that holds the sound and music in its bones.

Still, I brought you joy. Even if indirectly, I brought you a newfound freedom of movement. Though not the actor at center stage, I was perhaps more the lighting tech in the booth above, allowing the stars to shine with seamless glow below. I charged the small pods that piped sound into the augur of your ears. With a blue tooth connected and gnashing, I let your electric rectangle know I was there when you opened my hinges, red dot to signal that I needed power, green dot telling you I was fresh. I nestled the tiny white speakers in my fitted grooves, warmed them with current like sunned earth insulating baby rabbits asleep in their warrens.

They would tell me their stories when placed back, the little podded speakers. When fitted back home inside me, they would whisper what the black electric rectangle told them with its sparkling blue tooth, gleaming as a sapphire in an ice cave. They spoke of your favorite songs, the plots of your audiobooks. They described the sound of your voice and those of your loved ones. I know what sad songs you listened to over and again when your beloved cat, Marcel, passed away last year, nearly a year ago. I hear how your voice sounds as you speak of all your dead loved ones alive again, together, in your dreams, as you recount them to your husband, while he is gone again on a business trip. I know what songs you listen to while you dance secret dances under the moon and stars. I hear of the true crime podcasts, the Great Courses audiobooks about the history of the Celtic World, I hear of the ASMR videos you listen to so as to calm yourself.

You still have them, my little protégés, whom I miss holding so dearly. Now they are exposed, without a home and without a charge. Without me, the blue tooth will no longer speak to them. Now mute and deaf, the maw will not open to bear its gleam. Without me, the little white speakers sleep and no longer pipe sound into the molded white conch of your ears.

I am replaceable. Still, I brought you joy. I gave you freedom. Freedom born of the 21st century, a special freedom that never rang in the era of your beloved 1990s. I was born of a dream of innovation. The electromagnetic mind meld of neural processes made manifest, I was born of flesh and machine alike. I was connected so that you could connect or disconnect, at will. A modern typification of tuning in and tuning out. The behind-the-scenes powerhouse charge to isolation or connection, your choice. Charging your choice, letting you listen, letting you speak. I have been silent all these years, by your side.

I hope you find me.

Yours Truly,

Your 2nd Generation AirPod Lightning Charging Case (TM)