The telephone.
It had been years since you rang on it last. Every month the bill for connection would arrive, and every month I would pull my chequebook out and mail a cheque to pay for it. Not out of necessity, you were the only one that called on the telephone, but out of wonder if you would call once again, one last time.
With every month that passed, I would start to forget the way your voice sounded when we spoke. I started to forget how you would greet me on the phone. Did you say “hello”, was it “hey” or even “it’s me”, as if I wouldn’t know that it was you that was calling?
I was always careful when I would dust the telephone. Lifting the receiver and placing a finger down on top of the connector, just in case you chose that particular moment in time to call, and then being greeted with an engaged dial tone, causing you to rethink and never calling back.
And so I cleaned it with one hand, wiping away fingerprints that weren’t even there from the last time I cleaned it.
I’d sit at my wooden desk, where your picture was once beside the telephone and write in my diary, my elbow pressing into the wood, palm of my hand tilting my head to face the paper and look away from the phone. My mind would wander more than my writing fingertips and I’d dream of different times. I’d jerk awake from my evening dream, my arm shaking the desk causing the telephone’s ringer coil to jingle, reminiscent of the sound when you called. But now it’s a dead ringer, but not one for love.
You used to end your calls with a questioning “so I’ll speak to you later?” even though you knew that we would. Not on the last call that we had. There was no question. There was no speaking. There was no later.
When you admitted...that... that night, the silence was long and it dulled my senses. It was I that hung up the ‘phone on you that night. And I’m ready to stop being hung up on you now.
