Calling

There are calls I can make; there are calls I cannot make.  I can call and ask you to work, to volunteer, to put forth effort on behalf of a partisan candidate.   I call and I remind you to vote.  I encourage you to engage in civic duty.  A hundred calls a day, sans effort.

And yet, you I cannot call.  I cannot call thee, to say hello; how are you; my thoughts strayed in your direction; I wish I was there for another academic year; would you dance with me?  None of this I can say.  It is easy to call and ask you to vote, or volunteer, or ask where to acquire information or carry out an action.  But you?  No, you are not easy, and it is not your fault.

I wish I had called you those three hundred times and more.  And not one of those calls to you.  And my solution?  Because I have not called you, it becomes ever harder to call.  So I shall not call, but not for lack of [unintelligible], nor for lack of thought.  It is, I fear, much harder than ’tis to call a person I shall never call again, and ask them to support an action I  shall never know if they supported.  It is, indeed, I fear, much harder.

This too,