She shifted her weight back and forth,

the black opaque tights

her mother made her wear that morning

because they looked nice underneath the pencil

skirt, shimmering

against the September sunlight

and as she looked despairingly at her dead phone,

the battery having been forgotten to be charged

overnight,

she began to become anxious, desperate and fidgeted

to the point where putting money into the thin slot

became somehow a sign of alien ignorance

but she never once lost her ability to keep the legs beneath her worry

from moving back and forth.

 

She struggled to keep her thoughts on the point,

miles from home and lost in Bootle

with forty pence to her name and the sound

of close by sirens

making her shake with nervous appetite

and the dry sweat linger too long in her neck

before dribbling down seductively, tingling

with brutish excitement as she failed to remember

the phone number made easy by speed dial two.

 

Slowly, her right index finger placed

from forgotten memory, a series of numbers

but to whom she could not recall

and as the wires and technology whirred into action

she heard the distinctive sound of an old

style receiver pick up and greet a familiar hello…

 

…As the sun went down over the final telephone box

on the stretch of road between Bootle and Litherland,

and with strangers looking at her with quizzical faces,

she put the phone down on the receiver, the pips

having sounded clearly and with rapid fire

before she realised she hadn’t asked

for help.

 

Ian D. Hall 2015