Out of Line

It’s been a long time, she said
into the dull phone,
the phone that had been waiting,
waiting for just this call.
               
Where are the dreams we had, she thinks.
You were going to bring them to me.
Remember how, when you left
you turned against the sunset,
I saw the tear.

You with your bright star.
I saw it first
before you even knew its name,
it was your future.
Far, far it would take you and stake you,
I could feel it when I fell
and tried to keep from looking into you,
down into the brown eyes of your growing.
But I did fall and your arms measured me
and I could see that I was not quite right.
                           
His voice sucks her into the wire
across the lines that dissect the sky
and makes lives accountable with it whispered answers.
She can see him hunched into his shoulders
delaying truth with pretty words,
looking across the yard where a cat sits somnolent
in the doorway and perfume invades the room
seeping from the closet.

He is saying good bye now,
the shattering is too loud.
She cups the receiver to keep it
from finding her ear.

The phone drops for a moment
from the grasp of his shoulder,
as he types answers that are important
into the glass eye of his future.
                   
Good bye, she says
into the dangle of line
that lays broken and betrayed on the desktop.

And all he can hear is a dial tone.

(a story poem from the good old days)