9x4x1

The black corded phone was in the house when we bought it and moved in. It sat in a dusty corner and was perhaps first used by my friend Lydia who accompanied me on the long journey from Georgia to New York. Now it sits on the desk or floor of my small apartment. When it rings, I know no one who used to call will be on the other end. In fact, it's very rarely for me. Nowadays, I regard the ringing phone as a suspicious stranger rather than meeting it with the usual anticipation of the past. It is small, plain and appeared in my life as an unexpected and totally negligible item. Now it handles the lions share of my telephone correspondance. I feel an odd suspicion toward it, as though it is a monolith causing an evolutionary effect on my household and perhaps the world. I suppose it's more likely that my life has evolved without the shady support of this unsuspecting, and yet suspect, telephone. Maybe it's the cord that throws me off. Either way, it seems so very strange that I should end up with this item that was never mine when I've lost, albeit somewhat voluntarily, almost every other stable factor in my life.
Remember how Holly Golightly said the cat wasn't hers? It's kind of like that. The phone and I don't belong to one another. I feel like I could throw it out of a cab into the rain, but I know I'd probably run, panicked, down drenched city alleys calling for it and hoping it was alright. That pretty much seems to be the way most relationships in life end. We call people and hope they are alright and wish we had appreciated them more when we had them. Maybe I'll start kissing the phone goodnight and telling it what a good phone it's been. Seems like a logical preemptive measure, don't you think?