Morning Phone Calls

Free Verse Poem by Ashling Meehan-Fanning

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It snowed again last night.
Encased the world in white and 
muffled the gray earth underneath a 
snowy sea of slow and quiet.

You need quiet, you said to me,
before launching into stories about 
your day: the tests at the hospital, the 
elderly man you fought with over Fox News, 
the cup of coffee the nurse brought you, 
how dad is doing, and what you had for dinner.

Snow makes the world quiet but 
you hate the snow. You hate the 
cold because it reminds you of 
fighting for the warmest spot
on the bed you shared with
your siblings. It reminds you of 
your first winter in America and 
how you didn’t own a jacket thick
enough to protect against the Chicago
wind. It reminds you of being poor. Poorer.

I love the snow, and I hate the quiet.
So I’ll listen to you talk, and by the time
the phone call ends, and the plows have
come down my street, we’ll both have 
gotten what we wanted this morning.

---

Ashling Meehan-Fanning is a poet based in Wisconsin and a second-year student at Augsburg University’s MFA program. Thó Wiŋ Magazine’s upcoming issue will publish two of her poems. On weekends you’ll find her hiking with her wife or playing D&D as an excuse to have a four-hour brunch with friends.