So many damn layers in between
us.
“YOU HAVE A PREPAID CALL FROM:
[George Wilkerson]
AN INMATE AT CENTRAL PRISON…”
a digital guard tells my mother, who
must PRESS 5 to accept it. How
can she ever accept my being
on death row?
“Hello?” I probe
the aether. “Hi!” says she’s delighted
at the same time her monotone is just
room temperature. Her cute Korean-tinted
English catalogs fresh mundanities: How it now
takes all day to rake away crunchy leaves, especially
since my siblings are too busy to visit, to help;
how fast her heart flutters when she texts
a man my age she’s never met; how
she laments her creaky knees and dying
vegetable garden.
Her voice lays
wrinkled palms on my chest
and the inside of me
aches then opens,
presses 5.