Call Waiting

Before she connects
filling in outlines I have remembered

without color--all gray to me

but hers, always the brightest

elemental lithium exposed to air

and breaking  into pointed splinters.

Remember how?  she says,

then unearths some story with bones I know,

but flesh that’s decomposed and hanging.

She connects it all new, us golden girlies

in dark woods between the houses of our mothers

and among the dead sunfish we caught in one hour

and enduring nights in the backyard tent

with flashlights and mosquitoes

where we played Hangman in the dark.

I could see the letters in their places,

but she could see the gallows line by line,

and talked me to sleep before I won.

She tells me she’s been crazy but is not

now and I know what she means.

I have not been crazy so much

as wishing to be drunk

but lacking booze enough to follow through.

I need reminding

of the pickle sandwiches we made

and the flapping, old dressup dresses

we visited wrinkled neighbors in.

Her battery is giving out.

Her phone beeps

though the line never really does go dead.

My phone is also hung,

my ears and the dry mouth

I cannot use.