communication raze you loomed large as a wasted year. i was choosing one of the funnels on either side of your face to tell what i had to say. the nearest one was too close to home — home being a relative term. not a state of permanence. not a thing to be sheltered by. not a place to live or die. the furthest one i could not see, staring at your sidelong stance, stoic and still. i could only guess at it. it would have to be identical to its other, its shadow organ, carved of cartilage and skin, muscle and drum. i chose the ear invisible to me and spoke in rivulets distilled by the certainty that what i said you would not hear, and what you heard would only be the untrimmed fingernails of a palsied hand scraping the new day's dirt from an old surprise. 131025 ... nr there's someone i know whose name is sometimes long for another name. our entire friendship is social media messaging back and forth. we have occasionally seen each other in person, mostly pre-pandemic, but we never really chat on the phone or on video. every time she messages me, it's something matter-of-fact about herself, like a status update: nr, my stomach hurts today. nr, i think i have a date wednesday! i just bought work clothes. nothing fits me anymore. nr, i don't think my date wants to go on a second date. here's a picture of me wearing a ring to symbolize how far i've come in my career. and sometimes, like today, it's lots of these. i am having trouble with this because, on their own, they sound like normal things you might tell/show a friend, but this makes up most of our communication. she tells me a fact, i talk to her for awhile about that fact and give her my opinions and ask questions, and then she tells me another fact, rinse and repeat. and then she sometimes goes back and wants to talk more about the previous fact, especially if there's a new development. sometimes i tell her things too, which she responds to for a sentence or two and then says something like "i do that when" or "that sounds like something so-and-so does" and launches into her version of what i've said. she doesn't realize she's coming across this way, and she doesn't seem to mind when i don't give her a very involved response to one of her statements. but i'm exhausted and feeling like i'm only there to listen to her. i'm not sure how to address it. strangers on the internet think i'm being a jerk, it seems. but i need a communication style where friends let friends blather. and where friends indulge in each others' blather. 220111 ... nr if there's no talking, and no seeing each other, it just seems like common sense that there's nothing. 240907 what's it to you? who go blather from