Message

I missed your call tonight 
while I was busy writing.
Hadn’t heard your voice in
weeks, not since you were last
too busy to answer. I told
myself that’s why I saved
your message. I told myself
that so I could make it
a poem. After pressing nine
and pound to save, I held
the phone for a moment,
dramatic pause,
wanting to think about what
I’d say it meant to me. Instead,
I thought about what it did
mean, actually, how content
was no concern to me, and felt
ashamed, writing life as
I lived it. I decided not to
make it poetry, thought
of Anne and Sylvia, writing
their lives up to their own
ends, and me, making living
an art, like everything else.
I wrote this poem in my head
as I decided not to. Wrote it so
a long time from now I might
know what I meant.