To you who have never known what it is to be tethered      to the family's one phone by a corkscrew cord           filthied by idle fingers twisting it as we talkedand stretched by our efforts to sneak with the handsetaway from the dining room where that cheap plastic box        clung to the wall, my sister and I desperate                to hide behind curtains or in a nearby roomand mumble dumb endearments to whichever lucky soulwe had a crush on that week: I won't say how wonderful       it felt to hear a call's unexpected tremolo              and rush to answer that sudden summons,lifting the receiver's heavy curve out of its metal hook,or to dial seven numbers on a whirring analog wheel      and hear a distant ringing pulse in the ear,              knowing that actual bells trilled as a bodymoved through space to deliver its hopeful Hello?—no, it was awful, that phone, intended for businesses,       brisk standing exchanges of information,              not a home where its too-public anchoringleft adolescent siblings open to each other's mockeryand the cocked ears of nosy parents straining to decode         one side of conversations as we curled closer                 to the wall and whispered words downwardinto the darkness that our huddling made, not pacinglike a barking dog chained to a stake in the backyard        but trying our best to vanish, descending               slow as a diver sipping words like oxygenfrom a humming line whose other end kept us breathing.