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Tuesday Morning - by Jeanette Angell

7:00 am by D Kai Wilson, editor in Issue 1, Issues, Poetry

The telephone rings
A small thing, a sound
Ordinary, and she reaches for it
In an ordinary way
She says hello
Her mind on the children
Her mind on the meeting
Her mind on the dinner on
Saturday night, his friends from
Kansas, she says hello

She says hello.

I love you, he says

She barely listens, his voice
Is ordinary, part of her being,
Part of her thoughts, he
Must have missed the plane,
She thinks. Her response
Is automatic, even as she is thinking
Of what to wear for her meeting – I love you, he says
Again.

She laughs, then, you miss me
Already? she asks,
Balancing the receiver against her ear
As she clears the dishes
As she pours more coffee
As she thinks about her blue skirt –
I love you, he says.
Don’t forget that.

She stops pouring the coffee.

There is something in his voice, and
She knows
She knows that her life is
Suspended in this moment
She knows what it is.

She is wrong.

She hears his voice, and she knows
She knows that he is saying
Good-bye, it’s not a good time
An ordinary Tuesday morning
She thinks she knows
She thinks there is someone else
Her throat closes
She says his name –

I love you, he says again
It is all he has to say
He thought there would be
More, I love you
A lifetime trapped in three words
He should say more
There is nothing more.

She clutches the receiver
What is wrong, she asks
She thinks that she knows
She thinks he is leaving her.
She is right.

I wish, he says
But he doesn’t know what he’s
Wishing for
More time? More
Sex? More money? I wish
You knew, he thinks
How you light up a room when you
Come into it, how when you first
Put your arms around me I knew I’d
Come home, How I lied
To you six years ago
About the girl at the conference
And never lied again, because of how you
Smiled at me when I got home
I wish, he says

Her throat is closing
She can’t listen
She can’t hear
Are you leaving me? She
Asks, her eyes not seeing
The kitchen
The dishes
The pictures on the refrigerator

Yes, he says
You are the best part of my
Life, he says
Tell the children

She finds her
Speech: tell them that
You’ve left? she asks,
Her voice far and foreign to her.

Tell them I died
Thinking of them
He says.

What? she asks, and later
She will live with that word, the
Stupidity of it, the
Last thing she says to her
Husband.

I love you, he says
Again. I have to go
We’re oh shit
Baby –

And then there is
Silence, and she
Stares at the phone

In the end all that she knew
Was that he knew
His airplane would crash

And all she had wanted to
Know was
Who he was sleeping with.

Bio: Jeannette Angell is the author of short stories, essays, novels, and creative nonfiction; her work has been translated into 12 languages and has appeared in 15 countries. She lives and writes in New England, United States.