The Love Haters

by Katherine Center

The kind of video calls where you chat driving to work with your phone in the cupholder, and then home again with your phone on the passenger seat. Then, at home, you set it in the basket while you do laundry, and balance it on a bunch of bananas in the fruit bowl while you make dinner, and prop it on the sink ledge while you take a shower. The kind of video calls you do with genuine loved ones, where no one’s even trying to look good—and you’re mostly seeing the ceiling fan, or the inside of a pocket, or part of a nostril.

“Sometimes words aren’t quite enough.”