After the Call
The phone goes quiet in my hand
the way a room goes quiet
after someone has said the true thing
and there is nothing left
to arrange around it.
You said you were fine.
I have learned, over the years,
which kind of fine that was —
the kind that means:
ask me again in a minute,
when I've had time to build
something sturdier to hand you.
I did not ask again.
I let the fine stand
like a house I knew
was not quite finished,
but was, for tonight,
enough to sleep in.
SAMPLE READING
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READING NOTES
Written the evening after a difficult phone call with my mother, in which almost nothing was actually said. I wanted the poem to hold the same restraint the call had — to not say more than the call itself allowed.