Phone Number

Image borrowed from Yahoo

Phone Number

You smile at the matchbox size card
in my bedside draw,
an art deco lady drinking a cocktail through a straw.

On our first date you ridiculed Roy O
singing his heart out, ‘he’s so depressing’ you said,
‘his family died in a house fire’ I said.

You were a dancing Queen back then,
so I switched to club-land
on the radio, desperately keen not to offend.

The note still has your scribbled writing, the number
of your lodgings phone
before the introduction of the digit one,

your maiden name
that makes our kids giggle slightly embarrassed
that life before ‘us’ ever existed.

Emit 4 people it says on the pass,
two sad gooseberries
who talked all night long of future memories.

Martin Cordrey

Posted over on Applehouse Poetry