Undeclared Poem by Tara Teeling

There’s a white phone on the wall.
It rests silent, blinking an eye.
Red over red, urgent flash and glow,
letting me know the line is alive.
Waiting.

He’d be on the other side
with a few pushes and clicks,
but the receiver is too heavy
for a weakling like me.

There is something seductive about
the coil and curl of the cord around
my hand. I feel its smooth, licorice skin
touch mine which is pimpled like
a hen’s. My skin most fowl.

The dial tone hisses ‘what if, what if…’
in my hesitant ear, and I listen with
heavy breath in my throat, one finger raised
to find the wind. The heart stopped long ago.

I know the voice will be the same,
but it’ll speak a different language.
I’ll be pink with shame, unable to
grasp his tongue, which at one time
would have been reflexive in nature.
Lexicons and sweet bygones
swirl and whirl in hypnotic white noise.

The numbers seem big and bright,
whispering how easy it would be
to push them and break the code,
quieting the meddlesome buzz.

But I don’t.

The murmur and hum of a hopeful line
is far more welcoming than the
empty silence I may hear after
I tell him that I’m sorry.