The Telephone (2003)

When his mother calls. He strains to sound the voice of love and care, to locate it amongst his repertoire of songs. Wants to recall the questions he should be asking her. Perhaps she's returned from a holiday, expects his curiosity? He can't remember the last occasion when they spoke. If he could reconcile the resemblances. Between himself, her voice in his ear...

When his father died, an opportunity for both of them to forget (the cloud-wrapped summit of forgivess). All the fractures of the past, time's discolouration of the page. He remembers his father's funeral, the black flock of mourners filing out through the cemetery gates, how powerless the sun was that day. How words, never planted, will perish with the body...

His mother, she knows her way around him. Like a kitchen, compartments. She knows what she will need to take out. He can imagine the clock in her kitchen ticking above her now. Her eyes of concentration. Holding the telephone tight to her ear, the bones of her hand. When her voice divides him with sadness. In return, he gives her silence.