There are these moments that make all kinds of quiet thought start up all together in a shatter. At three forty-two in the morning, while I was reading and writing, a call buzzed into my phone.The identification said "Blocked." The only person who ever calls me with a blocked identification is my mother, because she uses a pay-as-you-go plan. And my mother would not call me at that time, though she knows I would at least have been awake. I did not answer.
But then I wondered if it could have been her. If it were my mother she would call a second time, and while I was waiting for that phone call to repeat I wondered about the emergencies that could be happening right then in the night. There could not be many accidents available for invention, when they would always have been asleep for hours. But there could have been some other kind of accident, maybe with my brother or my sister or her family.
It didn't ring twice, and so I wondered about who else might have been calling me. Perhaps it was one I was with earlier in the night watching fireworks and lending bike locks, calling now to give a voice. Perhaps it was one who does not talk with me. It could have been one far from this city, walking home after some bottles just to say, I do not know. Dozens of faces flashed in possibility, people whose phone calls sent would abruptly rearrange my posture in all ways, but to which I would have listened. Night carves out the very real parts of a person. When numbers are dialed in the deep moments of the night, it is most often to say some things that should be heard.
Maybe it was a mistaken call. Maybe it was meant, but when I didn't answer that made the other person feel it was mistaken.
3 comments:
you speak pure poetry and it entrances me.
Thank you--that's really nice to hear from you.
There's no fear like the fear - the cold, acid-tasting fear - that is stirred by a phone ringing in the dead of night.
I know, you weren't writing about fear.
But I am. ;)
Beautifully written.
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