I’m just calling you to ask if you have ever
scrunched
the skin under your eyes and made wrinkles in the mirror
and felt like you were seeing time? And when you let your eye skin
fall back into place, was it like reversing time,
like time travel, like being close to The impossible?

I’m leaving you a message to ask if you have the free time to create some impossibilities
with me? Or at least to make an easy dinner,
an internet personality’s recipe?

I’m calling you to ask if you wanted
to take a walk, even though the outside seems
so far these days, more than simply through the
door and always below freezing. And with my
tendency to slip, too icy for long distances…
where was I going with this?

I’m calling you to ask if you’d still catch me if you saw me slipping?

There is a saying about the cold being good for the lungs,
but I can’t agree. I could never breathe
and my cheeks, they’ve always burned,
not a laughing warm, but a brazed brittle,
a porcelain doll, uncooked pasta.

I’m calling you to say, I’m trying not to crack.

And I’m calling to ask if you think I am brittle, or strong, or neither—
if like old receipts or stale cereal, you find me not worth saving?

But no! We don’t have to go there.
No one has to save anyone.
No one is asking anyone for anything.

Honestly, I’m not even calling you.
I’ve never called you because I can’t hold the phone to my ear, I’m too afraid of the words I
might speak. I’m not leaving you a message because I am afraid of the permanency of my
own voice. Besides, what if you didn’t stop to listen, and worse, if you did?

What we say cannot be put back like displaced skin.
All of our sentences to each other become beings.

Beings we are afraid to bump into at the supermarket.
Beings we are afraid we’ll recognize on the slick streets.

Angelica is a writer from Buffalo, New York who has published or forthcoming work in over
thirty magazines including Westwind Poetry, Mantis, The Laurel Review, The Cardiff Review,
North Dakota Quarterly, and Air/Light Magazine, among others. Besides being a devastated
poet, Angelica is a Marketing Content Writer for a green energy loan company. She is also
currently writing her first novel, so wish her luck.