So easy to do that. You, sitting in your eight-hour shift,
on the phone, and I'm following your voice, which tips
itself up and down and out like an arm stuck in a shirt,
and reaches towards me like the news I don't listen to
 
anymore, but which plays on about all the troubles of
the day regardless. Abbie, at work, who cried on your
shoulder about managing people, made everyone eat
lunch at their desks. The man you were selling those
 
eye creams to, whose stye shrunk into a pore. And all
the ladies at the club; who tried to oust who, and how
you cracked a plot against you. I'm sitting in my room
only the room is my raincoat-sheathed body, separate
 
from all that beats upon it. I respond with the facts of
some external region: yes, I'm tired, rather tired today,
and I don't think anyone is home for dinner. The ritual
to each other is to call. The way a mother's duty is not
 
love, first and foremost, but an action. I won't ask you
to understand the kind of person I am or root you out
from between the moss-grown landmarks of your life.
We know what occurs in the holding pattern: no anger
 
or unnecessary bitterness. I want to add a favor to the
list of tasks for today. Can you speak just a little more
to me? When I say nothing, my ear is pressed forward,
rushing into the aisle of sound like a dancer deserting
 
the demands of lyrics. The words skipping like ads for
the self, the managers, cream, griefs, unending clamor.
Your voice, which I follow like a street back into breath,
into the earliest promise - call, and part of you will stay.