What Didn't Transmit

I was telling her about the thing

I'd been carrying for three weeks,

the thing that had weight and shape

and I'd finally found the words—

The three dots appeared

and disappeared

and reappeared

and then:

Call ended.

I tried calling back.

Voicemail. Again. Again.

The message about the mailbox being full,

which I'd heard a hundred times.

I sat there holding the phone,

the incomplete sentence still in my throat,

like swallowing something whole.

The thing I was going to say

is still inside me.

The words didn't go anywhere.

They just came back home

and settled down

in the same place they've been living

for three weeks,

heavy and sharp and unsaid.

She called back twenty minutes later.

I didn't answer.

Some part of me needed to know

what it felt like

to let a call go to voicemail

when you're the one who answers.