I call on my neighbor one afternoon from the hall. He thinks this an intrusion
          and has nothing to say to me. We lived by one another for years, and never has
          the other made a glance or pass, or a friendly call to bury an hour.  My offering
          all the while entices him to this side, and we sit forlornly in trances that collide.

               We say nothing for what could be a week or a day in this room of ours.
          It occurs to us, that the emptiness is soothing to the open ear, and we wait for the
          other to discharge the barrel of a lung first.

               The neighbor is offended by this treatment. He likens me to distasteful acts and
          hounds me for sending him here. He rises to the door and stages himself for a
          thrash at my chest. I call out to this neighbor; I tell him things don't have to be
          as they are, if only life had been kinder to the two of us. Quibbling on palms and
          knees, I whine for this unlikely companion to return at once, to never leave me
          beset as this for it may be the last we see the other.  The door closes and I
          fuss to the dark, believing all this to be the start of a one act lark.

               My line to the neighbors had been severed over the night. The maintenance
          men put out, never returned my calls. The Landlord was unresponsive to
          my wailing; he lived the next door to mine and made it clear I was to pick up and
          leave if I continued my inhumane stances on living from inside. I ask this
          Landlord to connect me again, for old times; I crawl lively on his floor and
          play miraculous cage tricks while he lashes me with words that beat and
          creak, and I become a doll. He puts me out like the other boys, and I take
          up my playhouse again.

                Fearing to pass out on this night, I pick up the receiver and live off
          my own two words of thought: “Connect me.” I put this thought in a pocket, with
          all decency in mind, and I never look on it again.  This play phone reminds
          me so, of somewhere long ago, and I collapse.