I used to wonder why I never saw my cell phone in my dreams, or why I never even thought about it while dreaming. Then I was grateful, since it meant I could escape it’s constant presence in my life. Now, I wonder if it’s been a part of my dreams all this time, just in a way I didn’t recognize because the parts of it that matter in the way that dreams matter seemed so similar to my own thoughts.

My phone occupies my waking mind,
Not because I cannot turn away
From this rectangular slice
Of the all the world’s misery
And the shining success of the lucky few,
But because there are times
When I can’t help but relate
To the endless little updates
My phone displays about
What is going on in its life.

These small intrusive thoughts,
Invading my life with an urgency
I wish I could deny,
Are even less my own mind
Than those that come from within
But ring so loud with similarity
That they might as well be.

“Signal is searching for messages”
My phone declares and, unbidden,
I find myself thinking aloud that
I have been doing exactly the same
In a silence that has stretched
Beyond even my wildest nightmares.

Is this bubble my own thought,
Received from the ether by my phone
As I routinely cast it into the void
Beyond the bounds of my conscious mind,
Or is this a reflection of the way
That my phone communicates to me
The ways in which I use it
During the few minutes when I’m not?

I shape my experience of the world
And my experience of the world shapes me
As I search for myself in the life I live,
The thoughts I endlessly think,
And the occasions when I remember
That I am more than the person
I pretend to be at each moment in time.

I no longer know which came first–
My search for a message I never received
Or the silent notification
That my phone was looking as well–
But I am certain it does not matter
Because neither of us found anything
And I have made what peace I can
With this lingering silence.