Calling Card

Dawit Bekele

Free verse · Family

My father's voice arrives in small denominations.When the minutes run low he talks faster,all the love compressed into the last ten seconds —eat well, lock the door, you are doing fine —

and then the dial tone, which I have learnedto hear as a kind of blessing. He means: enough for now.There will be more money. There will be more card.

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Up next · no reading yetPrayer in a Language I'm ForgettingI still know the shape of the prayer, the way the body folds and rises, the cool of the floor against my forehead. It is the words that are going. They loosen a little each year, like a hem. I say them now the way you hum a song whose verses you have lost — carried by the melody, trusting my mouth to remember what my mind no longer holds. God, if you are listening, I hope you grade on intention. I hope the bowing counts. I hope the ache in the right place is its own kind of fluent.