on the spaces we've left for pay phones

i'm going to call you from
the pay phone--
one between the dollar store
& the movie gallery--
the one with the thick
metal umbilical cord connecting
it to the ear drums
of god-- 
the one
who ate my quarters when
i was 9 but always refused to swallow my
voice-- i want you to hear 
me through the pay phone--
i want you to wait for me to call--
make yourself smaller if you
want to hear someone--
we've left spaces for the
pay phones in our life--
at my high school there are
empty nooks scooped out of the
walls where the pay phones
used to wait to accept 
prayers & elegies & car rides
home
while the sun was going to
bed early in december--
chewed quarters-- widened their 
throats-- 
& when god grew restless
waiting on a swivel
chair at the local dinner 
he would walk to the front
door-- pick up the pay phone
& listen to every phone call
that we ever made--
all at once-- he heard every 
iteration of the words
   i
      love 
           you
that i have ever taught myself
to make-- each syllable
whirled in the metal rat
tail of the receiver--
this is our tether 
to each other's most intimate 
conversations-- 
learn how to hold
each other in a silence--
there's so so few
words
we have to say so many different
things-- 
there are night when i 
forget that only god listens
to pay phones now & these spaces 
we have left only to 
remind ourselves of all the
ways we have said goodbye--
i walk down to the pay phone 
past
the library-- the one next to the
dollar store & the black window
carcass that once was
a movie gallery--
my reflection is ghostly
in the front window & the carpet
inside still has the pattern
of stars printed
in row where there once were aisles 
of dvds to rent--
there is only a metal rectangle 
where the pay phone was
but i pretend to insert a quarter--
press the phone to my ear
& there i am-- the 9 year old
girl calling for a ride home--
there i am the lover of
late night dial tones & strumming 
the telephone wires who knit
a hair net for the sky--
there i am waiting for
you to call me back
& find a new way to tell me that
you love me-- only for it
to disappear-- only to live
on in a swarm of our words
lurking in the spaces we've left
for pay phones--
check your pockets full of 
quarters--
you never know when you might
find a place to stop
& listen to all the things
we ever said to each other--
all the
      i
          love 
               yous
& goodbyes-- we leave
forever waiting on the
other side of a pay phone--
pick when i call
i'll we waiting for a ride home--