My brother drove his car barefoot
the dash strewn with empties
old cassettes and maps to places
he never saw the sharp bend
how the river leapt
and no-one said suicide but if you’d picked up
as I fumbled laundry quarters
for the payphone
I would’ve told you
endings are brutal
metal on granite
barely time to reconsider
before the sun slips
and silence
steals the color so I let it ring hung up
when your wife answered
my greyblue yearning
twisting
through the dial tone
like childhood drives
from the old house wrestling boredom
and tuna sandwiches
my little brother’s head in my lap
shoes off sweaty palms on my jeans
wiping crumbs confusion
when I woke him relief when I whispered
we’re here, we’re here The rain tastes of gas
when they haul his station wagon
onto the bank one headlight blinking
wildly I watch clouds destroy themselves
listen to the hum of phone wires
wait for you to answer to whisper
I’m here, I’m here
Rebecca Faulkner is a London-born poet and arts educator. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Red Wheelbarrow Magazine, Smoke Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, Pedestal Magazine, The Maine Review, On the Seawall, and Into the Void, among others. She was anthologized in the Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021, and was a semifinalist for the 2021 Red Wheelbarrow Prize. Rebecca was a 2021 poetry fellow at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. She holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Leeds and a Ph.D. from Birkbeck College, University of London. Rebecca currently lives in Brooklyn, New York and is working on completing her first collection of poetry.
