Margaret calls me before bed and her voice is quieter every night | Kolleen Carney Hoepfner

For Margaret, my Grandmother

and she says I am frightened, now,

of being returned to where space and time intersects 

and of becoming the dust that stars are made of 

and what happens in the nothing space 

and who will I know there. 

Margaret calls me and it is a kind fire, a blaze 

that I feel through the receiver heavy in my palm.

Her anger is evident as her body slows 

to a crawl. She says Behind all things 

are reasons, and some reasons take a long time. She says 

I am a tree in this mirror place

and lately I feel the axe more desperate 

and wanting. My breath does the talking

as her voice becomes a spool of thread

unspooling. Margaret is already kindling.

She says There is a depression after learning 

but she needs to know now, she says 

It’s time for me to know now at last.  

My log tells me nothing now. 

He is sleeping 

and will not wake up, 

and she sounds so small. 

She says And now an ending; when we are everywhere 

we will be one. She says Sometimes, all things are changing 

and falls silent and her silence is heavy as if it is saying a lot and I say 

Goodnight Margaret, goodnight 

and goodbye, Margaret 

goodbye.

Kolleen Carney Hoepfner earned her MFA in Poetry from Antioch University in Los Angeles. She is the editor in chief of Drunk Monkeys. She is the mother of two children, the author of two chapbooks, and the owner of two dollhouses. She lives in Burbank CA with her family and makes cool shirts for cool people in her spare time.