An ESME Poetry Award Submission
Call of a Lifetime
She never got as far as walking through the doors
Just the scheduling phone call
First giving her name and social security number
The woman on the other end
Could have cared less
Robotically saying words
from a memorized script
Each frozen utterance
cutting to the core like rapidly falling shards of sleet
A chilling premonition
How she could start unconsciously living
heart scarred
with no regard
for the least of these
like the host to the voice
mechanically filling out contact information onto a sheet
Despite having no idea what the future would hold
She decided not to go
This exchange
impetus enough
to continue
being host
to the unplanned fetus
Terimarie Degree is a mid-west residing emerging writer and poet. She grew up the child to a naval officer living everywhere from southern California to unique locales such as the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. These experiences have supplied reflections that cover an assortment of topics from faith, family, relationships and coming of age in the 1980s.
