we haven't kept in touch these last few years

[rememberveralyn]

camaraderie works for elephants because
they never forget
your birthday
your phone number

they never throw out letters you’ve written
on the backs of envelopes
in bistros or the backs of shopping lists
on the kitchen counter.
their laborious responses won’t be
thrown into the trashcan one by one
with grammatical
syntactical
and even content scratched out in
pure embarrassment.

no, you’ll receive the heartfelt scratchings
in your next day’s post.

and if an elephant drunkenly fumbles into
the answerphone late at night
deleting your name, face, and voice
she’ll remember in the morning
to return the call.