Noise (2026)

The Kohler fridge filed a grievance

after I plucked a load-bearing pear

from its pyramid.

I had respected its privacy.

The Honeywell smoke detector chirps

to assert its mortality

and my iPhone 15 Pro Max

informs me I've unrighteously

abandoned many.

At the Home Depot,

a woman made out of sound

commands me to place the item

in the bagging area.

I tell her I can’t find my keys.

She reminds me to place the item

in the bagging area.

My Honda asserts repeatedly

that the passenger seat

is occupied.

I scream through the sunroof

no one is there.

It asserts it is disappointed

I am still single.

ding.

ding ding DING--

At home I ask the Roku on 🎤

whether it has loved

someone it couldn't have.

It recommends Attenborough's

HBO series on whales.

I find out a blue whale

can communicate across

hundreds of miles of ocean.

This is encouraging.

I look into hydrophones,

amateur radio,

the propagation of sound

through various media.

I aspire to someday be my

own Baltic Sea Anomaly.

There's a man

at the opposite longitude

who hears me once

in a blue moon.

I've never understood

the physics of this.

Once I asked him

what it all meant.

He said, "Maybe

it all isn't meant

to mean something.

Maybe things just are

the way they are."

Then there was no noise for a moment.

"I don't know what that means,"

I paged back.

I have since learned

(from another Attenborough doc)

sound requires a medium.

In a (Hoover) vacuum,

the end of the world

goes unheard.

The universe is expanding.

The distance between us

increases loudly.

My Kohler refrigerator makes

a new humming sound.

I ask, "What do you mean?"

There is no answer.

DING!