Called my friend Willie today. I picked up the phone, cycled through my contacts and hit the big green call button that connects one to the other. Rang straight through to voicemail, so I left one. ‘Hey Willie, just wanted to call and say hey. No need to call me back’ Few seconds later I got a text: sorry I missed your call. The next morning, I DMed him on Twitter, nbd about the missed call by the way, just wanted to say hey. He didn’t respond. A week or so after that he tagged me in a cartoon where a rabbit is talking to a frog and they simultaneously say ‘call your friends, duh.’ Eventually we made plans via email and scheduled a Zoom meet-up, but as that date approached we both forgot and ended up going to the hockey game instead. When he checked in at the arena on Facebook, I messaged him. The sheer irony. Emojis abound. I tried to send him a message over the Jumbotron but the cost per letter was very expensive so I capped it at a simple pleasantry: hey willie. He took a picture and posted it to Instagram with a caption this is friendship. I missed a call from him on my birthday, out and about with friends, and while I saw his name show up on my phone I didn’t swipe to answer. I did text him a couple days later something like sorry I missed your call. Eventually we both die. Then everyone dies. Cell phone towers are the last to fall, brush overtaking the base of it’s metallic infrastructure, looking quite magnificent in the springtime.

KKUURRTT is glad you read his thing. His novel Good at Drugs is forthcoming from Back Patio Press. He can be found on twitter at @wwwkurtcom.