Sometimes I ache for a different time,
a few decades before.
When the stars who watch me now had seen a bit less.

I would paint my bedroom walls in stripes
pink and white.
And we would have a real telephone with a spiral chord,
our fingers blackened from the newspaper as we reach for it
ringing.
A radio playing in the symphony of the breakfast chaos.

Real things and real people.
Time not tainted by staring through screens,
trying to glimpse the person behind theirs.
Everything just the right amount of different.