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The day they came to take it away I decided to stage a sit-in a chair.
Without the chair I would be obliged to stand As is customary in a red telephone box.
I didn’t bring chains or a placard Just a thermos of Bovril and a novel, Wrapped up, new and still unopened,
Unlike our box which was smashed up old and abandoned.
It tuned out that
Both box and book featured
a man approaching seventy or thereabouts.
One had lost his wife but had a found new love. The other was awaiting a call.
Both were a dotted line
Where the word loss should be “After …… comes love”.
And now both face death or
Slow deterioration then demolition.
This was our box, our usher, witness, priest, Sometime sofa and procreator,
Its hymnal full of names and numbers That may be gone
But belong to us, not British Telecom. In here echo our words and songs Struck at times when we longed to hear Voices removed from here to there but From the receiver to our ears and on.
A few passers-by take a peep sneakily, Probably surprised to see somebody, anybody Sitting sipping Bovril with a novel
In an abandoned phone box disfigured by graffiti. I pretend not to notice and keep my head down As if the novel offered more than just a mask
To keep the thoughts at bay to make the time pass. I fall asleep and no doubt snore
Breath on glass, brow on door.
At some time, the phone rings. “Hello John. Yes, it’s me…
I am in the phone box near the pier. You know, the one that you and me Well, we won’t go into that here.
I’m dead, but you should know that ‘After loss comes love’, so you see
The box is past it, like us two. Best to let it go…”
We spent an hour or more
Catching up with gossip, the garden, the news, Until the pips popped up and cut us off.
I didn’t say goodbye; there was no need. “You’re right. It’s time to move on, Yvonne.” Beep, beep, beep, brrrr, gdong.
So that was that. The deed was done. Home I went with the chair and the Bovril. The next day the box had gone
But not the memory of Yvonne And not the novel.
December 20, 2023
2024