Long Distance

This one is about long distance relationships, of necessity built on communication rather than physicality, and how disruptive and horrible it is when that communication suddenly lessens or stops.

It wasn't fair of you to take
a heart you only meant to break
a cruelty on your part to ask
for love only to cast it back
and though I still ache to forgive
this silence where I've come to live
has left an empty gnawing space
that no amusement can replace.

I cast about with scattered mind
for anything to pass the time
or curl into a ball and pray
for the ending of the day
or haunt old channels, reaching out
with trembling fingers, fighting doubt
but that faint hope that made me dare
is dashed when I find silence there.

I'm running out of ways to stall
slump in my chair, stare at the wall
and watch the shadows rise and fall
and feel the minutes ooze and crawl
until - at last! - you finally call...

and never mention love at all.

Author's Note

I don't know if the sudden shift in rhyme scheme at the end really works. I was trying to convey the increasingly frantic feeling of being cut off from someone important and the way that the worry makes time just ooze by in misery, but I'm not sure it does the job. What do you think?