The Last Payphone in Manhattan

The last payphone in Manhattan

has seen a thousand pretty girls

in a thousand little black dresses

and can tell you what their mothers cooked for dinner, or the fantasies of their 1947 Harry-Truman voting-boyfriends.

Those were the days of pastel and glass chandeliers hanging in the pinstriped streets that Joe DiMaggio forever owned.

Forever owned.

The city is still busy, but the last payphone doesn't host a line anymore.

A line that used to wrap around the block, quarters slipping and dropping and slipping and dropping just for the privilege of a few minutes.

Every "I love you" from the customary to the heart pounding firsts used to fly through that receiver in a single day

and it never got old.

Those were the days when the yellow pages were worn like a hat

and mid-pubescent boys giggled as they drew obscene geometry over the area codes.

Their giggles sounded like springtime in the winter.

Once, a twenty-something subway regular who used to draw those shapes on the way to school

shouted Italian curse words right through the mic,

hung up hard enough to make it hurt,

then turned around in shame to wait another twenty minutes in line and say I'm sorry.

The "I love you" at the end of that call, was among the most sacred ones.

That Italian kid grew up, dropping his quarters in a few times each week.

The payphone tried to add up how much he spent over a lifetime, just for fun

but every time someone dialed a number it threw off the count, so math became a dead language

and don't you know that's why memories are all the last payphone in Manhattan can speak in now?

A payphone without numbers is a payphone of memories.

If you try to make a call now, all that comes out the other end are wonderful memories, and we call them static.

Which means that soon, the last payphone will be gone as the rest.

As soon as someone bothers to report the trouble

to whoever these sorts of troubles are supposed to be reported to.

It could be a while.

So if you get the chance, make a call sometime.

Two quarters to spread the stories of Italian boys

West Coast wanderers

hopeful youth and every stage of the light in their eyes

short skirt princesses

burnout bureaucrats

sober dancers

and all the rest.

Manhattan's last payphone watched every one of them from the back of a subway station

and their I love you's

belong in every ear.