I dialed the landline to my childhood home,
let it ring into the past—
again and again and again
I knew my parents wouldn’t answer.
They're both dead.
Still, the ringing soothed—
each unanswered tone
a promise that someone,
anyone, might answer.
After ten rings, a recorded message came on.
The voice was full of girly twang
and the snap and pop of bubble gum.
The voice I heard was nothing like my mother.
It was the mother I once imagined—
carefree, untouched by the cigarette rasp,
free of the heavy, deliberate tone
that braced against disappointment.
Not the chant of a woman
who saw no promise in herself, only in her children.
Beyond my window, a sparrow circles,
returning to the nest it has built—
a place that still remembers its shape.
The message ended.
I let the silence stretch,
listened to the emptiness
on the other end,
then hung up.
I noticed the heat bending
through the window's refraction
wondering if revisiting the past
quenches nostalgia for the dead,
gives my parents a proper ending.
I watched other people mowing my small lawn
under a bright sky,
listened to Spanish pop blaring from tiny speakers,
the music drowning out the din
of nail guns attaching shingles
to all the houses being built beyond.
I move with the moment,
opening the window
to take in the scent of just-clipped grass,
dancing awkwardly to this music with lyrics
I can barely hear in a language
I'm learning to understand—
laughing until my belly hurts