Your Call Cannot Be Completed as Dialed

I see dead payphones underneath
the eaves of shuttered, graffiti
ravaged storefronts in
the abandoned strip mall corners of town,
their cords cut and their infant receivers
kidnapped from them long ago,
but this is a payphone
in an Emergency Room
where the doctors keep it alive
with a dial tone hum,
a ghost siren of the past.
An operator urges me to deposit
sixty five cents for local or
ninety cents for long distance calls.
I'm bored because
I didn't have
the heart attack or stroke
I thought I was having.
It's just the wear and tear
of a middle-aged newbie:
nerve pain travels
and tricks me into
thinking it's the Big One,
akin to the panic
of my late grandmother's
legendary senior moments,
when she called out
my dead grandfather's name,
that she was going to
be reunited with him soon.
I deposit change into the slot,
dial my late grandmother's
landline number to see if
she picks up, because
I have questions about
growing old only she could answer.
The phone rings—and rings—
I wait while a voice calls my name,
and I want it to be her,
but time doesn’t have a heart.

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