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My friend has an antique pocket watch

Genuine 18 kt gold

Ornate and small

Handed down the generations

Probably belonged to a genteel woman

Who tucked scented handkerchiefs

Into her sleeve

Before alighting from her front stoop

Into a world scented with horse manure

Diesel engines

Black fumes from blacksmiths’ forges

I have an iPhone

Only first generation

I’m not the first adopter in this family

I’m only an inheritor of personal technology

Slow to fall in love with devices

That require commitment

Sleekly outfitted with its own skin

It’s a fashion statement

My pocket computer

My home away from home

How will future generations know

How I kept time

What object I fondly stroked

Empowered by its presence in my pocket

Bereft when I leave home without it

When their archaeologists unearth

My iPhone with its dead battery

Will they patiently reassemble its pieces

Into a working whole

Write about it in Discover emagazine

Or whatever their version of “e” will be

In the promised fantabulous future

I wonder