Elegy for the Answering Machine

We kept the tape because it kept her voice —“four seconds of it, saying we weren't home,“please leave a message after the small tone,“and thank you, in the voice she used for strangers.“

Not even her real voice. The company one.“The one she'd put on like a better coat.“And yet when the machine wore out, and the man“at the shop said he could not save the tape,“

I understood that she would die again,“smaller this time, the size of four short seconds,“the size of please, the size of after the tone —“and that I would not be there, and could not stop it,“

and that some griefs are just the earlier grief“arriving late, in a cheaper, second form,“to a house where the machines are giving out“one at a time, and taking her along.“