Your Phone Call
Published in the Blue Nib 2017 Anthology
Honorable Mention in the 2017 Fall/Winter Blue Nib Chapbook Contest
poetry
​
the police probably know
better than anyone
that life and death
are full of obligations

like how they must decide
which parts of your car
should be photographed
from different angles

or

how they decide
how tightly to cinch the cuffs around
your wrists drunk with the pulse
of whatever alcohol has numbed you

or

how they figure out
how to comfort my papa in the presence
of so much blood and in the
absence of his wife who was a moment before

so essential
so irrevocably indissoluble, so alive
when they bring you coffee in that grey room
next to the evidence room where tragedy reposes

where truth is defrauded and deceased
do they wonder
who made your eyes unseeing
who fermented your humanity what erased you

pint by pint
do they ask you what part of you lies
drunk, dormant
that her rings, her clothes, her scent sealed in a bag

for permanently expired things does not
perish you instantly, vanish you
does the sweat gathering at the nape
of your neck yeasty and rank

hush you, drag you, chain you
does your raging hangover
squeeze your lungs empty
burn adrenaline in your extremities when they offer you

your phone call
inexorably scraping my soul
exposed forever unalterable
your story wails

in muted mutterings screaming in the distance
a siren that I dream is not for me
I am fooled with slumber
when my phone call comes at 5 am with word
​
that you killed
my Nana