Most read ▸
Carol Berge
When we talk on the
telephone, we feel our
loss more heavily.
i stare at the
slits, the box that
sells her voice to
me.
i hold the phone
like a live thing, like
part of her. it holds
a sound i love.
yet i hate the
upright coffin, its
pimply walls,
the printed admonitions
lining it, for being
you don't call
I'm half without other half
raw where you tore off
the telephone cord umbilical
hangs lifeless
no voice sings furry
humour
that thing's a corpse
vibrates no meanings
it just hangs there
"Hallo, hallo!" impatiently he cried,
And I replied,
Sleepily, "Hallo--hallo!"
No sound then; and I stretched
My hand for the receiver, all my nerves
Tingling and listening.
My hand clutched nothing, and I lit
The candle--strange!
I could have sworn it was the shouting wire....
But no!
Besides, a bare and unfamiliar room
And he, why, long-forgotten, maybe dead.
Yet all around,
Filling the silence up with tiny sound,
A million tremulous thin echoings,
"Hallo--hallo--