Red Telephone Booth

An old gaunt lady

With feeble steps

Walked to the red telephone booth

On the roadside pavement

Everyday she dialed a number

And spoke inaudibly into the receiver

As tears streamed down her crinkly face

This continued for an hour

Until she resigned for the day

Hoping for another heartfelt conversation

A baffling mystery unsettled by us

Spectators to this daily drama.

©®Susmita Mukherjee

Every time I want to call you

It feels like I want to enter a time machine

To take me back to the peaks

Of what we had

And to ignore the valleys, the ugly sallies,

The gesso underneath the Hallmark card we were.

But you helped me see that reality

Isn’t made from exceptions to the rule.

To pretend otherwise is to be cruel

Or simply masochism

 as nostalgia -

A losing game.

So I walk pass the phone booth

Which these days is only in my mind.

My life now might be boring without you

But it is far far far more sane.

A time capsule indeed that goes way back to the century when communication was a means of bridging the gap. I could have sent word just by dialing with a voice on the other side saying hello, are you alright.