i like the idea of 1889.
phoning you through their public booths.
even though i’d have to travel to try and talk to you.
hear your pleasantries and remedies.
sneak a quarter into those machines and lift that old thing up to my ear.
i wouldn’t hear your voice first, but you would hear mine.
you wouldn’t ask what i’m wearing
but i’d say you smelled like the taste of crunchy leaves on a sunday.
i’d stand in my red snow hat, matching the color of
my red bottoms and hat with a pink little flower. the flower you said
resembled marriage and love and butterflies.
through the glass, leaves would fall from those colorless
yet lively mothers onto our bodies. i’d know you liked to jump in them
while i watched you laugh. you’d know i don’t like to jump and try to push me in.
that’s how i’d want to telephone you.
you inside the booth, never coming outside.
staying inside. where you belong.
two bodies use to the same soil died.
two hands used to the same veins withered.
two conjoined lips dried and flew away into hibernation.
Lena Singh is an ambitious Asian-American writer in her junior year of high school, who enjoys writing poetry just as much as reading fantasy during thunderstorms. Her poetry has been published in Gigantic Sequins and TeenInk, and she's also published a book on Amazon a few months ago called things i never said aloud. She's also grateful to have won a partial scholarship through an Oxford and Cambridge Immersion competition to study her chosen subject in London.