You can’t call her, don’t call her, she isn't answering

I don't recommend doing this, but I read a poem over the phone to a friend this morning while I was driving to work.

He is separated from his wife, her decision, and he wants his family back. He knows if he pushes too hard he will push her further away, though, so he is spending a lot of his lonely time trying not to call her.

We have all been there. I wrote a poem about it. I published it in my chapbook, A Heart I Carved For a Girl I Knew, which I had handy. So I read it to him as I drove down Lindell:

I take not calling her like a pill,
one a day, I can beat this thing,
one day at a time, I don’t need to
call her, it won’t do any good,
it will only make it worse,
she isn’t answering my calls.
I accept this truth like a pill,
I take one once a day, all day long,
you can’t call her, don’t call her,
she isn’t answering your calls,
shut up, you sad, stupid man,
put down the telephone, take a pill.

"That's what I need to do," he said. "I need to take that pill."

And then we put down the phone.

*

My sketch is of a "turn of your phone" sign at Anne Hathaway's Cottage in Stratford-upon-Avon, part of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.