The Silence Before the Robot
i call your old number at 2am. before the robot voicemail there's a little silence that used to be you.
i called your old number tonight. not to reach anybody. the number got recycled months ago, some stranger has it now, but at 2am if you call it goes straight to a default robot voicemail, and for one second before the robot there's this little silence that used to be you.
i know that's nothing. i know it's just dead air on a line. but i've started thinking of it as a room. a small one, with the light off, where the version of you that picks up is just about to. you're in the other part of the house. you heard it ring. you're coming.
i don't leave a message. i just sit in the little silence till the robot starts, and then i hang up before it can ask me to record.
it's a comfortable thing, weirdly. like leaving a porch light on for somebody who moved away.
i'll call again next week. i'm not waiting for you to answer. i think i just like knowing there's still a door, even if the house behind it is somebody else's now.
Did this one stay with you?
Keep reading
More like this
Stories in the same key
Picked for the feeling they share with the one you just read.
One New Song at 2:11
the playlist we stopped sharing got one more song tonight, and the timestamps go back further than i remembered.
It Still Drives Around Her Bed
The robot vacuum runs at 2am and still curves around the corner where her bed used to be. I took it out in March.
It's Raining in Both Cities
I never deleted her city from the weather app. Tonight the forecast lined up, and I couldn't look away.