I call you sometimes.
Just to make sure the phone still rings.
Just to make sure the operator’s voice isn’t at the other end of the line telling me the number has been disconnected.



But somewhere inside, while the telephone rings.
I know it has.



You don’t answer much these days.
I guess I hang up to fast.
Hoping that you’ll call back while I’m under my covers staring at the phone.



I fall asleep waiting.
To find out the next morning, that you never even cared.



I’m counting the zigzags in the paneled ceiling.
I carved your name in one of them that day we counted all the stars.
I guess we lost track while you slipped your hand in mine.



& I lost you in my own constellation.




But I’d curve each letter perfectly again, if you’d tell me the stars were real.




You left in hurry, and I erased you off the ceiling.
I can still pick up all the shavings and hang you in my heart.
But the vacant sign on my colored pencil heart was shaded long ago.



& I’m afraid I’ve misplaced my eraser.




I can still see the black smudge as I lay on the floor trying to read the squiggles.
Wondering if there really is an answer up there.
Noticing nothing. Breathing in glittered dust. Choking on used lines.



And as you erased the occupied sign drawn so perfectly in the center of my heart, every star in the sky broke gracefully.



& As I sit looking up at nothing, choking on falling glitter and breathing in tasteless air, I hear a distant phone ringing.



& I curl every letter in elegant cursive on the white ceiling.
I fall asleep knowing it’s just the operator telling me that no one is there.



& The white colored pencil falls from my fingertips as it rolls under the old orange chair.





As if I had never written anything at all.