It’s only the sound she wants.
She listens, a plethora of words, a whole encyclopedia of ideas, goes in and out.
There’s nothing sexual about it.
That’s just the way she is. In the morning
she has to turn on the radio
before she can get out of bed.
She calls out to me,
“shut off the the air conditioner”,
but I can’t hear her because of the noise.
Sometimes I try to listen
to what they are saying, particularly
if it’s about Iraq or the economy,
but she’s talking steady then,
so nothing gets through.
At least I have the excuse
that I’m deaf in one ear.
If I say “what?”, she says
“I’m not going to repeat myself.”
So I steel my heart to that also,
make believe I’m half asleep.
Only the other half of me wants to stalk out,
run away to another planet, another part of the house,
hide myself beneath a cone of silence,
Eventually she gives up,goes somewhere else,
turns on a radio there.She has them in every room.
On occasion I ask her,
what’s going on in the world,
what had she heard?
But she doesn’t know.
Really, it’s only the sound she wants.
All day she works, hunkered down over the computer,
typing like mad on the keyboard,the radio
blasting away,and she never hears
a word of what they say.