I have barely seen you these past few years, but there are holes in my heart that belong to you. And memories marked with your name in the buzz of my head.
Do you remember my phone number from when we were kids?
I want to call home. But the numbers disconnected, nobody answers. In the relentless buzz of the line, I want to hear that nothing has changed.
But everything has.
Change is the only constant. The only familiar tune.
So I will leave a message after the tone, so the ghosts of the pasts can hear it.
So the younger me who use to call the number just to leave a message, and listen to my own voice, can know that time does chase us down after all. And that the love you have will not last forever. And she will hang up the phone, and think nothing of it. Except for, wrong number.
We are a disconnected number, to an old landline, in a yellow hallway in a blue house. We are hello and goodbye and everything in between and feet touching the walls and fingertips in dust along the floor, and phone cords wrapped around arms and legs and everything that ever went unsaid, between now and then.
I miss you like a home I can never have again
I miss you, my dear old friend.
By Kate Simpson
*This was originally published in the ‘Tertangala: Heartbreak Issue’ (2024)