The Truth About Tigers

It’s become quite common to see
lawyers on TV flaunting phone numbers,
echoing the same digit,
a row of fours or string of sevens,
designed for easy recall
in the urgency of police stations or hospital hallways,
a sleek commercialization of memory.

Not so long ago,
we held dozens of numbers in our heads,
memorized, dialed deftly on rotary phones.

Now, the phones themselves carry this burden,
but still, I know the number of the house I grew up in,
a mere ornamental memory,
and my grandfather’s landline as well,
our closing conversation long concluded.

It strikes me as funny, sometimes,
that the numbers etched in my memory
belong to either ghosts or lawyers,
people I’d love to call but can’t,
and others I hope to never need.