Your Hands

Looking back

it must have been

close to midnight

when the phone rang.

At first I thought

it might have been

a prank, a crank call

something someone

was playing on me.

But it was you.

Again.

And it didn’t matter

how long ago you were dead

(that signal drifting

and roaming between

strange delays,

plucking out your name

from behind the new coat of paint)

it was just nice to hear

your voice. I was happy

enough to listen as you

repeated that joke

about the men in the bar

and curled my fingers round

that stringy plastic phone placenta

that I bet you would have said

was binding us together.

It was of little surprise that

you knew it was raining outside

(you probably heard the thunder

crackle from your end

if the line) and you wittered

away about torrents

beating at the pylons

and stuttered about

uprooted trees as my nails

dug into the cord.

Maybe I wasn’t listening

properly because I had been

reminded of that time

the rain clattering against

the skylight sometime past

my bedtime close to midnight

when you had dared me

to climb out.

I forgot to ask you all those questions

that would have once kept me up all night

and I didn’t say those phrases back

or retract those things I’d never meant

and when you said ‘oh, another call

sorry

I’ve got to go,’ I let you go

with all those other things left unsaid. 

Because I was remembering

crawling out of the skylight

and plucking

the flower buds that had not bloomed

at your request

from the stalks still flittering

between the wet clay tiles,

pulling at the pig’s tail phone cord

tying my hands in knots.