Reaching for the Phone (Cortland Review; November 2017)

Authors: Rob Jackson

Reaching for the Phone

When you'd gone, I couldn't unwrap grief

with the wreaths and presents,

like opening the panes

of the hand-drawn Advent calendar early.

On the twelfth day the ornaments came down,

each glass bird shrouded in tissue,

the lights a bundled tangle.

At Epiphany, we burned trees at dusk

in a circle of hands, blaze to ashes.

I touched the glowing embers

of my phone, then darkened them, undialed,

the receiving line dead.

Cold wedged in

like a box sealed for the last time.