The voice on the other line is a recording.
It’s a voice of exile. It sounds like closed curtains.
It’s a death sentence hello. And I wonder
what it would feel like to be greeted by a human
who would ask me how my children are
and if I saw the Pistons game on TV last night.
I say no into the phone, but the machine voice tells me
that it did not understand what I said. It asks me again
if I am suicidal. I yell no into the phone and the machine
tells me it did not understand what I said. It asks me again
if I’m suicidal and I scream over the soft hum of my refrigerator
that I am hoping I will live another twenty or thirty years
and after that I’ll reconsider things. The machine tells me
it is forwarding me to another machine. It goes on like this
for hours.
~ Ron Riekki
Ron Riekki‘s books include ‘U.P.: a novel’, ‘The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works’ (2014 Michigan Notable Book), and ‘Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula’.