the last gleam

At approximately 4:30 pm today, I watched as the last embers of black liquid crystal fire were gradually extinguished on its once-joyful face. I recalled the many conversations that were its blood; conversations that connected souls...some meaningful, some forced. It was the instrument of emotion---anger withheld, pain-in-your-tummy laughter, sympathetic tears, nervous anticipation, expectant silences.

Part of me wants to keep it somewhere where I will come across it---a jolt of memory---in an unforseeable number of years. I will look at it and remember what that phone meant to me in the two and a half years or so that its irritable ring linked me with those important to me, and with those whom I didn't know but may very well lock eyes with on the street.

If I don't keep it, at least its photograph will remain here forever.