In the Dark

In the dark, voices
speak. She knew, because
she had been there a
few times before. He had asked
her to write a love poem
to him, or to them, or
about him, and so that’s
what she thought she had done. But
it was written long after his
phone calls had stopped and long
after they began again. It was
written when she realized
how bored and confused
he really was with life,
how disillusioned. She recalled
how many hours she used to
sit and stare at the phone. The phone,
unlike any other model she had
ever owned before, had a light pink,
almost beige color, just like the one
from her childhood, just like the
one her mother used to speak in, whose
tone she could hear for hours. She could listen
to records incessantly. But her mother’s
voice only for a moment. Extra attention
was given to specific intonations
and a certain willingness, no,
eagerness to give in to the other,
to laugh, was always clearly expressed.
When she takes the receiver, now,
she sits in the dark and speaks and
thinks she is listening to the voices
of others and even sometimes her own,
when, of all the voices, she hears but one,
the voice of her mother
                                            alone.

-- Nina Sokol