Static on the Line

The mower’s dead, he writes,

after seven months of keeping quiet.

I sit on the linoleum floor

and watch the phone screen lose its light.

He doesn't ask if I’m eating well

or why I haven't been back home.

I hear the fridge hum through the wall

a low and heavy, silver drone.

I let the ringer run its course

three times before the air goes flat.

We’re better at this cold divorce,

a broken engine, and that’s that.