~a prose poem for a Black and Gold Super Bowl
You don’t always know who’s listening, who can breathe without making a sound while you chatter on about lunch and the way sweet tea tastes in an old metal cup, but you do know, most of the time, who you are talking to, whose laundry list of worries drown out your attempt to take a break, fold a few socks, think about what wealth there is sometimes in giving up.
That’s why, @saintshater, I have hung up on you without regret. Unphoned, unfollowed, unfriended.
Listen in, if you’re into that, when I call a real friend, but me, born the same year as this team, down on my luck just as long, living on red beans, trumpets playing “Marching In” for spare change, and Sunday afternoon losses…me, who picked bit by bit yesterday’s bad rotten news out of mud sludge and half-hearted hope…me, I don’t have to stay here for this. We fly south on 42 years of hard love next week, and your call was never mine from the start.
**Written in response to Molly Fisk’s writing prompt “write a poem about a phone conversation you’ll never have.”
