How to Keep Secrets Like a Telephone Booth
After Ada Limón’s ‘How to Triumph Like a Girl’
Whenever I walk down a
New York City street and see
a box of whispers
that is full of windows
but holds secrets like
a clogged city street drain,
I am astonished. Astonished
how one stranger after
another speaks to the
public confession booth.
How the phone never reveals
to the new sinner what
the last sinner whimpered.
But I always imagine
late in the darkness,
when the sun is streetlights,
when no one is there to hear,
that the phone rings and rings
all night long,
telling God what the people
shamefully admitted regretting—
the number of souls saved
for the low, low price of
25 cents.
Wrendolyn Klotzko is an aspiring poet studying education, English, and creative writing at SUNY Oswego. She originates from the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York, where she fell in love with obscure and obsolete words, used bookstores, and the outdoors. She has been published in The Great Lake Review and continues to write and submit her work. In fact, she is probably doing that right now if not distracted by whatever is outside the window.