Featured in the 2016 Spring Issue of Rambunctious
No Answer Cayla Dedrick, '16 I don't have an answer It's true that the person that you perceive Is different from what I've become, machinery grinding together to form a hapless warmth So distinct from the cool message that was left What I am is what is left, forgetting to try to find an answer within the message that I once perceived looking up at that sky that lived on the warmth that it stole; The cold that remains machine-like Makes it hard to be anything but a machine When all that's left is falsely described as warmth, a wrongly interpreted answer that's easier to perceive than what that message is trying to tell you, messages are misleading, the answering machine cannot convey human perceptions when a voice, a few words, are left and, in spite of its name, there isn't an answer hidden in treacly warmth melting in the sun, a warm feeling engrained in messages left so long that their answers have faded, such that machines are the only ones left who can perceive the words that were never for human perception We're too warm, too fragile to face the cold we've left in a single message That cool voice, a machine holds no answer Perceptions makes it hard to find an answer And warmth is often lost on machines "At the tone, please leave a message"