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Poetry

This Call Is from an Inmate at a Federal Prison

#poem, #poetry, #the sun magazine
This Call Is from an Inmate at a Federal Prison By Erik Tschekunow They say you eventually get desperate enough to call a stranger, someone who’s added her number to a database for the incarcerated, someone who’s even more alone than you. It’s amazing, they say, once you’ve picked a name (other stats sometimes provided), the numbers you dial clink like bottles meeting in a sea. Each distant ring is a pair of whirring lips held millimeters from that ticklish spot in the curve of your ear. Will she have the high, lilting voice and self-possession of the weather girl on the radio, or will her Hello scrape and knock like a stone being winched out of a well? And what do you say when she actually accepts the call? Is it to her that you admit you’re not even sure freedom is what you want anymore? They say not to say anything, just listen to how sorry she is about your situation. It’s important to close your eyes. The breeze she says billows her bedroom curtains won’t reach you, drunk on the way by ghosts, but the shiver you’ll get is, you know, more than you deserve.

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