i now come from a forgotten time
when friendships were face to face
so that if one ever ghosted you in the end
you’d have an idea of the disagreement
that happened, some sort of basis.
but there is none of that now
and that doesn’t even account for this pandemic,
the lockdown and the fear,
friendships have simply become virtual
where it becomes so difficult to tell
when one’s being real or insincere.
and while connections – even deep ones –
still do happen, there’s one glaring detail
that will always be hard to frame,
when they disappear as they often do,
did they trust you enough
to tell you their real name?