Salmon and Mushroom Soup

and a full voicemail box

My voicemail box is full.

It’s like dust bunnies under the couch. I forget they’re there until I see them. And when I see them I never have time to do anything about them so I say I’ll take care of them later. But then I forget again until someone reaches under my couch or tries to leave me a message.

Last week, my grandpa called me three times to try to wish me happy anniversary.

But he couldn’t leave a voicemail because there was already so many from him saved to my phone. I spent an hour this week listening back to the messages and organizing them in my phone’s notes so I could finally clear my mailbox of the crumbled and crammed audible letters I’ve stuffed inside it.

The ones I saved from my grandpa are titled:

“Where the hell are ya?” We were in Phoenix and should’ve been on our way to meet him for breakfast. But we were staying with my grandmother, and we couldn’t stop ourselves from laughing with her despite how excited we were to go see him.

“Weather’s kinda pukey.” We planned to meet him for a hike that morning, but the weather was bad, so instead we went to his house and stayed inside with him and his painted rooster statue named Clyde and the lithograph prints his father carved and stamped and heard all his stories from when they ran their printing company together (my grandfather and great-grandfather; to my knowledge, the rooster had no involvement).