How long do you hang on?
Until the cows come home,
or until the twelfth of never?

After I disconnected my mother’s phone,
I kept her number in speed dial—
nestled next to an icon of a house,
a symbol I needed to hold onto.

But when I changed cell phones,
deleting numbers one by one,
I fingered this entry like the memory it was.

“Erase entry?” the phone asked me,
as articulate as a phone can be,
which is not all that much,
but more articulate than my mother was
with her alzheimerspeak.

I told it “yes” in cellphonespeak.
“Contact erased,” the phone announced.
“Not really,” I said aloud, talking back,
the way I would talk back to my mother.
It’s not as easy as all that.