Garden Call – Jessica Ward

October 4, 2024

Back home, there’s a trellis
crosshatched and bound by
telephone cords climbing up
towards the deserted window.
Under time he cradles a twin
receiver and offers himself like
baby teeth to the yawning static,
careful, careful to parse God
into familial morse code. And
here he is his fate, bending
towards the light asking for
floods to untangle the double
helix or at least unearth his body
from the garden. But the line
breaks, is breaking into two
uneven shards and just below
the wings, mirrored blades
where his mother once planted
calamine, there’s an itch and a
fractaled rash blooming, marking
him with the missed call of
fruit dropped from the vine.