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Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. Leonard Cohen

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Please Leave a Message

photo courtesy of Rob Hanson



She dials the number
Ring, ring, click
Hello. You have reached...
Closes her eyes and listens to his voice
We are not able to take your call right now...
The kids say it's morbid, like hearing a ghost
But to her, his voice is like
a warm blanket 
and her bed is so cold
Please leave a message after the tone...
I miss you, she tells him.



10 comments:

Brian Miller said...

this is haunting in its reality...someone gone, whether by circumstance or death...to hear their voice, even a recording...yeah i get that...

dustus said...

wow. Wonderful poetic narrative/microfiction. The his-her 3rd person voice works incredibly well. Could feel her pain.

Christine said...

I could see myself doing this, all the time. Very haunting indeed.

Pat Tillett said...

Sad, empty and really good...

Patricia said...

Wow. I get it too. Oh my goodness... I can relate.

Ann Grenier said...

So real, a stab of pain mingled with the comfort.

Fireblossom said...

Once, I kept an old gf's messages on my machine for months, until a power outage did them in. It was like a little time capsule I could visit. I missed her.

JustRex said...

It's sometimes chilling how ephemeral are the important things we might leave behind.

nene said...

My mother's voice, I hear in my head sometimes when I walk by her portrait framed picture. One of her last pics taken. She stares at the point where she was told to in a studio before the pic is taken. There's a void in her eyes painted by the brush of the insidious nature of Alzheimer's. Her voice resounds in her absence. I appreciate her 'life'. Your piece reminds me of this. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

The things we truly love the most under everything else. Some of us know what they are, some of us don't until after.
I like this one thank you.