The Phone Rings

If being lost is not knowing the way, what is knowing and still not following the path to wherever it is you’re supposed to be? There must be a word for that, certainly.

Stupidity.

There’s one.

As I lie in a depleted state, I thought of the me of yesterday—a more naive me—and how she compares to the me of today. And as I did so, I pondered the question of how one might get themselves un-lost (found??) when they already know the way, and simply won’t follow the signs. There certainly were plenty of signs, weren’t there?

A person stricken by a sense of something. Of longing, of terrible loss, of nothing at all. And yet, overwhelmed to the point where I had been left completely immobilized against a world that continues to rotate in cold perpetuity.

Time does not heal all wounds, and the world pauses not for the broken-hearted, nor for the downtrodden. But to spit in your eye, it will surely pause and glare down at you with silent contempt. That is the way of the world. A current determined to sweep me away like river foam, and I’m tempted to just let it. Perhaps I will.

Perhaps…

“Huh?”

There was a ringing from the phone I held tight to my chest.

It was not just any phone, but a rotary phone that belonged to someone precious to me. It should’ve been long dead, severed at the cord to silence the endless stream of bill collectors threatening foreclosure among other such things. That was weeks ago, however. Silence had filled the damp spring air since the ringing finally stopped.

And yet, that same rotary phone that wasn’t connected to any source of power, it rang.

“H-hello?”

And I decided to answer.