I called you, but you did not pick up.
The phone heavy in my hand like an unanswered prayer.
My throat was filled with maybes and no’s,
pebbles of hesitation and swallowed courage,
And so I decided to continue speaking
into the hollow mouth of the receiver,
as if silence itself could listen.
I just wanted to tell you that I love you,
plain and unguarded,
without time folding its arms between us.
That all those years apart
were not abandonment but orbit,
a long, necessary distance
meant to remind us of each other
The way gravity remembers the moon.
I miss your rawness in conversations,
the way your words arrived unpolished,
like stones warmed by the sun.
Your unwavering love for family,
a shelter that never closed its doors,
a fire that kept burning even when the night grew long.
I thought I ought to let you know
that you are actually a star in my sky,
not distant, not decorative,
but fixed
a point I unknowingly navigated by.
You stand next to the moon
as a reminder of the possibilities,
of light that survives being broken into phases.
I called you, but you did not pick up.
Behind the dial tone
I could swear I heard you say hello,
Your voice slipping through the static
like water through cupped hands.
I could also feel the sweetness in your voice,
a familiar warmth rising
where my chest refuses to go quiet.
I could hear you yell out my name
As I tried to run away from the grief,
as if grief had feet
and memory had learned how to chase.
Did you hear the story I told yesterday? I thought,
the one I laid gently at the altar of air?
Did you hear the fear in my voice?
the tremor beneath the bravery,
The places where I was still waiting for you?
With tears rolling down my cheeks,
blurring the present into yesterday,
I finally saw you again, almost a flash,
a rupture in time,
And then I paused.
I realised that it was your photograph
in a distant photo frame,
a window that opens only one way,
holding you perfectly still
while I continue to age around it.
I called you, but you did not pick up.
Your number, permanently saved in my mind,
is a map to nowhere and everywhere,
a reminder of your presence
that refuses to become past tense.
I do this every day,
dial… call… dial… call…
like a tide returning to the same shore,
hoping to hear you say hello,
hoping the universe might misplace its rules.
Can you please pick up the damn phone!
