Fingertip

I touch the screen with my fingertip-

you appear,

your face in full pixelated light

illuminating my phone

like a halo.

We smile at each other, ask the other how they are.

My hand was so close to you

touching your face.

Mine next to yours.

You were a fingertip away

on the other side of the world.

When I can’t hear your voice,

my fingers do the talking

on the keyboard, composing arpeggios across the letters, taking notes, typing.

Hoping I would hear back soon because

do I have any other choice

but to patiently wait for Hermes to fly

from my fingertips and electronically deliver?

To wait for those ocean blue double ticks to uncover,

blue like the very sky we have to cross just

for our hands to touch one another?

Screen saver of us at my disposal, of that disposable snapped last June.

Yet sometimes I want to scream, God save me with a beacon of hope, Light Saber, cos I just might snap soon

from all this distant communication

between your evening and my noon.

World in constant rotation, times unaligned, miles between locations.

Fingertips desperately craning to reach, to create a fusion.

A true relationship or a false delusion?

Truth or Dare?

Fingers spinning the Wheel of Life...

Would you:

Trust in the truth they message you,

stifle the doubts weak internet connection could hide,

risk the rifle that could use bullets made of lies?

Dare to take a leap of faith into a digital void,

have a cry, tears lagging from iPhone to Android;

take a knife to the heart when his morning is your night,

21st century love through WiFi?

Truth be told, shaky connections might shake my resilience at times.

But still

I stand my ground, and my fingertips continue to rely

on those subterranean lines and satellite signs.

No more dates but we have data.

No more warm mugs of tea but virtual hugs through 4G.

No more real-time laughs to meet serotonin needs, but we’ve turned to sharing memes, even been voted as meme queen.

No more heart-to-heart pillow talks, but phone-to-phone poor connection Skype calls.

No more holding hands, interlaced like proteins, but we hold phones, fingertips touching, that’s why we call them touch screens.

We stood next to each other one last time.

Hands disconnect.

Taxi door shuts.

Cut off abrupt.

Rip it off fast like a Band-Aid, I think to myself,

so the sharp cut from the nick of the blade of separating goes quick.

Plug wires into my ears to numb the pain.

Escape into my head, fingers press play.

Show my boarding pass, I board the plane.

Yet you notice some things when you’re faraway.

I suddenly hear the violin strings that had previously slipped away quietly, now pulsing into my ear drums through electronic waves.

The soaring notes pull my heart strings, tension heavy, as the plane lifts into throbbing rain carrying

Distance that brings heart ache.

I just have to remember amidst the blur,

You are a fingertip away

Just on the other side of the world.