The Call Waiting in the Wallpaper

The room has been sugared past belief:
gold roses climbing the wall in patient stripes,
a lamp blown open past mercy,
mirrors learning the trick of too much evening.

On the side table, a red telephone
waits with its mouth shut.
Its cord goes down like a question
into the sleep of the carpet.

She is folded into ruffles and weather—
tulle of bruised blue, pale mint, apricot—
as if the party went off softly
and left its wreckage on her body.

A cake keeps its blunt announcement:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY 18
as though age were something icing could settle,
as though one clean number
might stop a hand from leaving.

But the mirrors keep multiplying exits.
The wallpaper keeps flowering over them.
The lamp whitens her hair to static,
and the static makes a mother of the light—

that late-hour kitchen voice
which said I’ll ring when I get there,
then never came,
or came and came through distance
too thin to trust.

No one has lifted the receiver.
Still, the whole room listens:
the red mouth on the table,
the cake with its hard little sentence,
the torn-cloud dress around her knees—

all of it waiting
for the voice that will arrive too late
and sound, through distance,
like paper flowers catching fire
without a sound.