Missing Phone Calls

Phone calls aren’t postcards, which are one-way,
like roads that don’t want you back.
Not that I don’t want my old Mom back, Mom--

It’s just that instead of conversations,
there’s word confetti. Little puzzles dashed over the airwaves. Urgent burdens to be decrypted:
“Do. . .         you. . ..        know….       what’s….    happening….       here…?!”
And mini tantrums, punctuated by staccato exits,
leaving Dad on the line to reconstitute his jokes.

Twenty-six years ago, I racked up a grand in phone bills,
blubbering from Brazil over a departed lover.

Lucky I married him
as he calls you 
on days I don’t.