The Real Reason I Called (Written with Joanna Penn Cooper)

I have a gripe to pick a bone with you
and air out a grievance plain as the nose
on your face. You see, when you said
you never wanted to speak again I took
it that you were having problems with your tongue,
that it had been lopped off perhaps and you
had no way to tell me other than with your silence.
It's like that myth of the woman and the tree
or the man and the rock or the woman with
the snake hair or the brother that kills his very
own brother. In short, I figured you could use
my help so I covered your doorway with rich blue
silk bunting to assure the neighbors that you were
okay with my leaving. There's a thing called keening,
a thing called rending of garments, a custom known
as the covering of mirrors. There is a right way to
do these things, and this is why I called: I'd rather have
you here or there than not here at all.