After the Beep
by and published in Edition Six of Pomegranate
I sit with my linoleum self, wondering if I should dial again,
imagining my fingertips drumming along the cool wooden floor of your house,
playing your curtain rods like steel flutes – halting breaths echoing through the uncertain frames of past conversations.
I once said
that I wanted to play the trumpet. it was third grade, and
I was deafening. words, those melancholy subtleties
did not exist in my resplendent march – it was a triumph of sound.
in this frigid present, my dreams play within silence.
it has been five years since I correctly identified
Alexander Graham Bell and still I cannot explain
how this works:
all the answering machine ever leaves are questions.
Eleanor Ellis
Eleanor Ellis is 17 years old and lives in Salem, Oregon in the United States. She is fond of hiking in forests, singing in other languages, improving her Spanish, and playing badminton. She has been published twice in Teen Ink and received second place in the high school division of the 2008 Oregon Student Poetry Contest, as well as being mentioned honorably several times.