It’s What You Said You Wanted
BY JILL MCDONOUGH
I think it’s a poem. I think I wrote it down. Andrea
calls. We talk for an hour and then she says she thinks
she wrote a poem. I think it has a title. She takes
the phone downstairs—footsteps, shifting handset. She finds
the book—I hope I can read my writing—and then reads
—her voice gentle, low, an excellent thing in a woman—
you don’t have to ask about the odds, they’re
stacked against you like cordwood, like—oh, wait. No.
I’m sorry. This isn’t it. I thought it was a poem but it’s not.