Woman Turning into a Typewriter

Her conversation would flow past him
like cigarette smoke, like smog,
her birdlike voice
simply background noise—
music in an elevator
or a department store. Finally, words
began to seep out of her fingers,

painting everything she touched:
their silverware, a coffee cup,
the shirts she pressed
for him and hung in his closet.
Sometimes she had to backspace
over some snippy comment
typed across his underwear

(or rewash his briefs if White-Out
could not cover
the stain).

Eventually, though, her throat
blocked, plugged
from guilt and disuse
such that she could no longer breathe.
Her fingers twitched out
ignored dialogue as she died.

Now her husband's newer, younger lover
uses only thumbs to speak.