Читать книгу The Dream in the Next Body - Gabeba Baderoon - Страница 8

The Call

The sound of the phone

from my flatmate’s room catches

me on the landing halfway

down the stairs, my palm on the handle

not enough to still

the impetus of the suitcase. It takes

a bruise on my thigh to stop it.

From the box of things to give away

– signs I was once here –

I grab my phone, plug it in

in the passage, and sit

on the stack of phonebooks against the wall.

Hallo Mama, I answer.

I am leaving for a new place,

each further from where I started.

Across the seven-hour time difference I fear

I will never see her again.

I want to say out loud I am losing

a centre to which I can return,

but do not.

She speaks too in a way flattened

by what is not said, coming only so close

to the parting between us by telling me

to leave safely.

Across the growing distance

I hear her voice receding from me.

I make her leave me

so I can be still.