on hard days
i grab the telephone
and call an angel


(please, stop right there with what you're thinking)



(just believe me for a minute)



i call an angel
and he never says hello

he laughs
and says he knew
i would call today


strange to listen to a voice
that's no voice at all
but more a plucking
of heart-turned-harp strings


i say 'he'
because
i know he's neither
but i'm enamored with the idea
of a boy who looks like a girl

(it's a guilty pleasure)


i ask what he's doing

"watching the clouds go by between my toes..."


i say that i am, too

(i just don't explain
i've got my feet up on the windowsill
and the clouds are really
too many thousands of miles away)



he won't explain to me
what it's like to fly

only what it's like to fall



i tell him i have to imagine that, too

i've never fallen ten feet
in my entire life


(not because i'm lucky


i'm just afraid of heights)




we've never wondered
how the telephone cord reaches

and we've never argued
over who has to pay the bill
this month


(somehow, it's never my turn)


then sometimes
i say something clever
and he laughs:
a fine, twinkling sound
that makes my toes curl

he says


"you're an angel."



i finger the buckled straps
that hold my wings on
and wonder if he's watching