phone book oceanography 

i found you in the yellow pages
& you were a dentist. we drove until
my father was a whale & my mother
didn't have a job anymore. i thought
you were my friend from elementary school
but you were just a man with drains
for eyes. i take a photograph of you
to remember the ocassion but when
i go to look at the picture you are
not in the frame. there are some events
i don't write about directly because
then someone might call me & ask me
about what really happened. nothing.
nothing really happened. in a child mind
everything is just a memory. the past
digging herself a place to lay down.
when i was really thinking of jumping
off my roof i looked at jobs every day.
i once interviewed for a job as 
a pet crematorium transporter. i think
it actually would have suited me more
than most of the stuff i've done. 
sometimes my dead pets call me.
they find me in the phone book. it's almost always
the quail because i could have done 
a better job with them. they don't blame me.
when i changed my name i became obsessed
with finding people who had my name too. 
there is actually a few. i called one once
& he picked up, confused. i breathed
into the phone & told him we had the same name.
he hung up immediately. what was he running from?
i mean sure he probably thought i was
a crazy person (i am, thank god). didn't he 
want to know more? my parents still
have phone books in their house. as a kid
i would sleep inside them. hear all the names
like a ritual around me. home alone 
i called whoever i wanted. flowers in the sink.
my father's whale calls. his hands holding
a shower curtain. the room, like a music box.