The Last Payphone
He hit the highway on his daddy’s old cruiser headed west past the strip mall and the falling-down post office where he had mailed a postcard to his girl last week.
Sure, he had tried calling listened to the ringtone that ended with the recording: “We’re sorry, the number you are trying to dial cannot be reached.”
Yeah, he stopped by her house watched the windows in each room go dark as he pulled into the driveway.
He revved the throttle the engine rumbled hot between his thighs she liked it that night his fingers caressing her neck his hand on her throat like holding a kitten in your fingers pressing squeezing control the breath breathe.
He’d call again this time from the last payphone in the county the red and blue Frontier booth its broken window panes scattered among dandelions
and dust-- “We’re sorry, the number you are trying to dial cannot be reached.”
providence
at once under the streetlights she dances pirouette in shadow a fire behind.
Christine Taylor, a multiracial English teacher and librarian, resides in her hometown Plainfield, New Jersey. She serves as a reader and contributing editor at OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters. Her work appears in Modern Haiku, apt, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Rumpus, and The Paterson Literary Review among others. She can be found at www.christinetayloronline.com