Text Messages from the Dead

Betsy Joseph

June 5, 2022

Your words registered first

followed by your unmistakable voice in my head,

silenced now these almost seven years.

I had not realized our text relay remained unerased,

unglimpsed, yet still alive all this time.

Momentarily time stood still

as I read the back and forth responses:

your desire to train for another triathlon,

then recent news on a clinical trial

your doctor was strongly advocating;

my return replies supporting your determined wishes,

striving to sound casual, cautiously optimistic.

Still you passed away,

your renewals of hope unflagging

while the cancer in your brain kept growing,

placing a choke hold on your life

until it ebbed and no longer flowed.

The text messages remain, though you are gone,

and they pulse with determination,

with your courage and daring

in the emptiness of space.

They are a reminder that I continued to live,

that I was able to choose the time of my retirement

while you had to depart from teaching

long before you were ready.

So certain, so hopeful for another remission,

you had the dean promise to schedule

classes for you in the spring.

Though your will was mighty,

the tumor was stronger.

You drifted away in the shank 

of a warm August evening,

and many mourned you on your way.

Time does not stand still, though,

and your voice reminds me to rejoice

that I remain among the living

and do not need conversations from the past

that are no longer relevant.

You were always mostly right, especially this time.

Just now, with two soft finger touches, our words disappear.

Betsy Joseph lives in Dallas and has poems that have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry books published by Lamar University Literary Press: Only So Many Autumns (2019) and most recently, Relatively Speaking (2022), a collaborative collection with her brother, poet Chip Dameron. In addition, she and her husband, photographer Bruce Jordan, have produced two books, Benches and Lighthouses, which pair her haiku with his black and white photography.