The Receiver, a Summer Morning

On summer mornings I sit before the telephone. I pick up the receiver, and the number my fingertips keep pressing at, in the end I don't press, and I set it down. Outside, mulberry leaves rustle in the wind. That sound is the same every summer. That person's name hovers in my mouth even without being spoken, and around this time of year it passes the throat and stays just inside the lips. That year, too, there was a morning like this. The night I first called the name was early summer, the night I called it last was as that summer was ending, and all the rain and blazing sun that passed between were, every one, equally blurred.