The day they came to tell me, I was at my desk,
sorting papers, ordinary as bread,
when grief walked through the door in uniform
and took the world I knew and left me dead
to everything that followed – sound, and light,
the coffee going cold, the fading day,
the drive home to a house that held their shapes
but not their warmth, and nothing left to say.
I buried them in winter. Karl was two.
Ekaterina. I keep saying her name
the way you press a bruise to prove it’s real.
I learned the grammar of the shattered life:
the folded clothes, the cot, the mornings’ same
unbearable brightness, the particular weight
of a child’s shoe held in a grown man’s hand.
Months on, I wandered into a junk store,
not looking, as the grieving never look –
just moving through the sediment of time,
the chipped and cast-aside and overlooked.
It stood upon a shelf: a candlestick phone,
black iron patience, tall as a raised hand,
and the old man said, I believe that phone
wants to belong to you. He seemed to understand
without being told. He saw the marks on me,
the ones that grief inscribes below the skin.
I also see you’re not a man who haggles –
he named his price and halved it with a grin,
and sent me out into the grey with something
I could not have explained then if I’d tried:
a voice made solid, weight against the hollow,
a shape through which the absent might be heeded.
It stood upon my study shelf in silence.
No line to carry signal, wire, or tone.
I told myself it was a beautiful object.
I told myself that every man alone
grows strange, grows towards whatever fills the room.
Winter came. I dusted it on Sundays.
Set papers around it. Worked late beside it.
And then one night the phone rang – and I sat
completely still. The way the body knows
before the mind consents to know. I did not
want to lift the handpiece. I was afraid –
not of what wasn’t there, but of what might be,
of what I’d do if it was just the played-out trick
of silence, of a mind that wouldn’t stop
its making. So I sat. It rang again.
And on the third ring, slowly, I reached up
and lifted it – and held my breath – and then
her voice. Not summoned, not the grief’s invention.
Ekaterina, saying just my name.
And underneath it, half-heard, like a sound
behind a sound, Karl – some small syllable of claim
on the living world. I didn’t speak for a long time.
I stood there holding the cold iron stem
and breathing, that was all, just breathing through it,
and she was patient, and she waited for me.
I cannot tell you what was said between us.
Some things are not diminished into words.
But I can say the fear gave way to stillness,
the way a storm gives way to winter birds,
and grief, that heavy tenant in the chest,
moved over slightly. Love holds heat after burning,
rises as faint smoke through what remains.
The calls continued – rarely, without pattern,
not timed to my worst nights or my despair,
arriving in the ordinary hours,
a Tuesday evening, a still Sunday air.
Not comfort so much as confirmation:
that the frequency we loved on doesn’t end
but changes register, moves out of hearing –
then sometimes, barely, finds its way back again.
Then I remarried. Life resumed its terms.
And the calls stopped, not sharply, but the way
light fades – you notice it is dark, not darkness falling.
I think she knew. I think, in her own way,
she understood what she’d been giving me
was not herself, but ballast for the living.
Love that holds does not hold on. It steps aside.
I was grateful. That was its own grieving.
The phone stood silent. Years. My brother John
had called each Sunday evening at the same
hour for two decades – ritual as vespers –
the ordinary sacred: how’s the week,
how’s the family, anything to name?
Until the Sunday that he couldn’t. He chose
to leave, worn down by what this country does
to those it never meant to let belong –
the grinding of a man’s identity to powder,
the theft of dignity conducted slowly
in offices, in classrooms, in the language
used to make an Indigenous man feel
that he is problem, artifact, or absence
rather than a person. John bore this
longer than any person should be asked to bear.
It was not weakness. It was the arithmetic
of decades. The Sunday after his funeral,
at the hour he always called, the phone rang once.
His voice: the familiar hesitation,
the way he’d start and stop. He didn’t want
absolution – only to be heard,
to give his brother the unmanaged version,
the one the living soften for each other,
the true account of how a man is worn.
He said what no coroner’s report can hold.
I listened. That was all he needed of me.
One call. The phone went still and didn’t ring again.
But I was not undone – I was completed
in some grief-stricken, necessary way.
He’d trusted me with what he couldn’t say
in life, and I had stayed. That’s all. I’d stayed.
And staying was enough. That was the gift.
Now the phone sits in my office. I have learned
to live beside a thing I can’t explain –
the way you learn the creak of a particular stair,
or know by light alone the time of rain.
It seems to know who needs it. Visitors
who carry something heavy in their chest
will stop before it, quiet, and sometimes later
tell me that they slept – that something eased.
I don’t ask what they heard. That’s not my question.
I only know that grief needs more than silence,
that the dead are not as gone as we are told,
and somewhere between faith and explanation,
between the wired world and what lies past it,
an old black phone hears what the living hold.
So let it stand. The iron patience of it.
The earpiece cool and ready for the cold.
Let those who need it find it as I found it –
not sought, but given. Love does not quite cease.
It changes register, goes quiet when we’re ready,
but now and then, for those who carry winter
through the ordinary weeks, it finds a way.
The line connects. A voice. A name. A pause.
And then the gift of being heard across
whatever distance grief has made of us.
© Bakchos 2026
I can’t find the right words to comment on this writing, I don’t think there are any. To call it poignant is to trivialise the profound endlessness of the grief, the endurance of love. The price we pay. You’ve written some astoundingly beautiful and pointed poems before, my Camerado, but this is the very best you’ve ever written.
Watershedd I’m surprised, not in a bad way, that Bakchos published something that shows his human and vulnerable nature. I’ve only met the stony faced warrior and reflective philosopher before, it’s strange to encounter, for the first time, the truly human face of someone who you thought that you knew.
Yes Kelly, we catch a glimpse behind the mask to a part of Bakchos’ heart that holds what is most profound. Paulo said perhaps one day Bakchos may tell us something of himself. This sombrely beautiful poem is perhaps, his response.
Kelly sometimes it’s important to give people a glimpse of what’s behind the mask.
Thank you Watershedd, I’m not sure that this is my best poem, but it’s certainly my most personal.
This is a powerful, quietly devastating narrative poem that uses a single everyday object — an antique candlestick telephone — as both literal prop and profound symbol. It explores grief not as a dramatic event but as a long, ordinary haunting: the kind that settles into the furniture, the paperwork, the Sunday routines. The poem is structured like a confession or a quiet testimony, moving chronologically from raw loss to reluctant acceptance, then outward to communal grief. Its free-verse lines feel spoken rather than sung, with a measured, almost prosaic rhythm that mirrors the speaker’s numb, careful navigation of daily life.
I’ve known Bakchos since we were both about 18. I knew when the events he describes in the “Candlestick Phone” were happening. The phone is real. I’m a Muslim, so I’m prepared to entertain the supernatural aspect as real possibilities. That’s for each person to decide for themselves.
Magical poem cuz, your father would be proud of the man you’ve become.
Mark this is a very moving poem, powerful and moving. Does the Candlestick Phone actually exist? If it does, can I borrow it. As you know, my story is not very dissimilar to yours. I’ve read this poem three times, it takes time to really sink in.
I read this poem yesterday, it’s haunted me since, it’s powerful, almost hypnotic. I’m not sure if you intended the gothic undertones, but they are there. Well done, hypnotic, powerful, memorable.
Your grief coming through this poem is palpable. The poem is powerfully, engaging and haunting. Well done.
Powerful and haunting. Attention grabbing and poignant. Brilliant and scary.
Mark I was never sure, I’m still not sure, whether or not to take the Candlestick Phone literally or figuratively? I always had the impression that the phone started to lose some of its vibrancy after we met, the living taking over from the dead. I’m still not sure what to make of that phone. XOXO
Bakchos, this poem delivers a real punch to the gut. It’s emotionally powerful. Well done.
After reading this poem, Bakchos, if the cops don’t get you, they never will.
Powerful and emotive. I’ve come back to this poem three times now, it lands a little bit differently each time I read it. It’s haunting and a bit melancholy. It gives hope for those of us who have lost those we love. Thank you.
Hello Mirko, I’m pleased to read that you found something of value in the Candlestick Phone. Of all the poems I’ve written, that one is the most personal and the hardest to write.
Wow!
Bloody good work, cuz
Ekaterina and Karl are still with you cuz. The poem is beautiful, I’m sure that wherever they are, they will be amazed by the beauty of this poem.
Mr Bakchos, this is a very emotionally challenging poem. Well done.
Thank you Father, your words are appreciated.
Bakchos this poem brings back some very unhappy memories, no doubt it does for you to.
I haven’t been able to read it without crying.
Mysterious and beautiful.
True love and beauty are always mysterious.
This is a very moving poem.
Some powerful words there Bakchos, well done!
Thanks Susan, this was a very personal poem.
“Love holds heat after burning,
rises as faint smoke through what remains.”
These lines – the incomplete combustion of love extinguished too early, smoke in its wake. What a perfect allegory for someone born in this land.
This poem is truly haunting and beautiful and unsettling and inspiring, all in one.
It’s an extraordinary poem, Jen. From devastation to hope. And we all want to borrow the phone!
Telefono di Ferro
(risposta spirituale)
Quando il dolore entra in uniforme
e prende il mondo che conoscevi —
quando la casa conserva le forme
ma non il calore di chi non c’è più —
il lutto cerca un peso tra le mani,
qualcosa di solido nel vuoto che rimane.
Non la fede, non la ragione —
ma un ferro antico, una pazienza nera,
che sa aspettare come sanno i monti,
che porta l’assenza come l’aria porta il suono
di ciò che fu detto, e non fu detto,
e aspettava solo di essere udito.
Ekaterina. Il nome ripetuto
come si preme un livido per sapere
se il dolore è ancora reale —
e il dolore risponde: sì, sono qui.
Così anche l’amore risponde,
non dalla morte ma da un altro registro,
una frequenza che non si spegne
ma si sposta oltre l’udibile —
finché qualcosa nel silenzio preme,
e la voce trova la via del ritorno,
non come fantasma, non come illusione,
ma come conferma: ti ho amato. Ti amo ancora.
E Giovanni, il fratello della domenica,
consumato lentamente da ciò che questo paese
fa a chi non ha mai voluto accogliere —
la macinazione silenziosa della dignità
condotta negli uffici, nelle aule,
nella lingua usata per rendere invisibile
un uomo intero — Giovanni cercava
solo di essere ascoltato nel suo peso vero.
Una chiamata. Una sola.
E tu sei rimasto. Solo questo:
sei rimasto.
E il restare era abbastanza. Era il dono.
L’amore che tiene non trattiene —
si fa da parte, cede il posto ai vivi.
Questo è il mistero più difficile:
che l’amore vero sa anche lasciar andare.
Ora il telefono siede nel silenzio
come siede la fede nel petto di chi dubita —
non prova nulla, non nega nulla,
ma è pronto. Freddo e pronto.
Che stia. Che i visitatori si fermino davanti
e portino via qualcosa di alleggerito.
Non chiediamo cosa hanno udito —
solo che abbiano dormito. Solo che qualcosa si sia sciolto.
Tra il mondo cablato e ciò che lo trascende,
tra la spiegazione e il mistero che persiste,
un vecchio telefono di ferro ascolta
ciò che i vivi portano in silenzio.
La linea si connette. Una voce. Un nome. Una pausa.
E poi il dono di essere stati uditi
attraverso qualunque distanza
il dolore abbia fatto di noi.
Thank you Aurora, your translation of my poem into Italian is beautiful. Italian is the perfect language for spiritual poetry.
That is so lovely of Aurora! Now I need a native speaker to read our to me so I can hear it in Italian.
Aurora that is a beautiful and moving translation of Bakchos’ poem. God bless.