Voicemail to October

by Anneliese Schneider

 

It’s autumn, knocking on the back of my head. It’s everyone

Else with their faraway voices, talking to other

Faraway voices. No. Long-distance communication, and

The way their voices leak, leak, an accident in here and how.



Leaves wave-rolling in the wake of a truck, the detritus

Dances. I dance, just a little, nodding along to something

No one else can hear. No longer in use, the oak leaf wasting

Its lovely curving edges on the concrete. I sweep it from the

Bottom of my shoe. What is the word that escapes me? Or,



What was the secret? like the squirrel slow bouncing over

The dry grass, I make too much noise for this frame. Burying seeds

In the ground, forgetting where they are. What was it I was saying?



That I won’t be happy until the hills have set themselves on fire.

No, not until the scars on the back my hands heal, and I learn

How to say something about the water that the water hasn’t already said

For itself. Running, running, like my voice on its way back down my

Own throat. Stumbling over the little stone words clicking against



my teeth, like isomorphic and contention and like entativity, that

impossible condition of anything thing being the thing itself. It’s

the words I learned, that smooth edged pocketful I didn’t skip

out over the water. But remembered, like a person who keeps

their promises, like the laugh I used to laugh. Just for this, just now.

 





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