In the days before answering machines and voice mail and caller id,
I let your phone ring fifteen times.

Fifteen times I imagined the rings hitting the wall, bouncing off the floor,                                  echoing through your apartment.
Fifteen times I thought of what I would say when you picked up and shouted, “What?” Fifteen times I thought of my love and my loneliness and what I had lost.

Later I learned that you were at her place
and not there to hear the fifteen rings,
the fifteen times I said your name.