Dead Battery

By Grace Marsh

I am almost six feet 

tall. It doesn't feel like 

a lot until I think 

about you and then it 

feels like too much, too far 

away from where I need 

you to be, I still reach 

for you after all these 

weeks, still call your phone late 

at night (two a.m. was 

always our time), spending

insomniac hours in 

long-distance dreamscapes of 

futures and babies and 

health. We were two hundred 

miles apart but it felt 

more like six feet — you, on 

the phone, so near to me.

By Grace Marsh