When it is late at night and that hum is clear as day, we listen harder.
The static comes and goes with little notice.
Until last night.
We lay in bed together. Though you were miles away, it had never felt closer.
And our voices trailed away too slowly.
Our eyes were shut against the lights of LEDs.
It was when I heard your breathing slow that I realized what the static was.
Imagine two hands of data.
Long delicate hands, with fragile wrists and tender fingers.
They are reaching.
Stretching out for miles.
Past the windows.
Past the branches.
Past the dust in the chilled air.
Past the night.
Until at last they meet.
Their fingers twine and grasp each other.
They hold too tightly, they embrace.
Wrists of data contort and bend as the fingers lace and mesh.
They hold tighter, tighter until the data collides.
No longer are they fingers, not wrists, nor codes.
They are now a glowing partition.
Luminescent cyan, glowing in dead space.
Togetherness.
Numbers twined to distortion past any means.
Only one calm glow in the midst of nothing.
Then we say goodnight.
It is past our time for bed.
The codes and streams of data begin to pull apart.
The glow begins to dim and falter.
The outline of two hands are seen again.
They still grasp one another, more desperate than before.
Tighter than before.
It is of no use though.
They begin to slip apart.
Your breathing is too soft to hear now.
I have lost you to the warmth of sleep.
All I hear is the soft static.
I want to hang up, but I can not.
I want to hear you breathe for one more second.
The static murmurs over take the line.
The fingers are now being pried apart.
They clasp onto the other.
Their grip is slipping.
Slowly they begin to part.
Their desperation grows.
Quivering, their sequence grinds together.
Each number smashing into the other until it cracks.
The static is created.
On and off, intermittent in its struggle.
I know you are asleep.
I take this opportunity to whisper sweet nothings in your ear.
My only wishes.
My dreams of you.
When all is said I fall silent.
My finger resting on the end.
One more second of your breath. That’s all I want.
Yet the static is too strong.
End Call.
The hands dissipate into the cold.
Their struggles for nothing.
No more static on the other end.
There is no other end now.
Silence.
Bits of faded code linger in the air until nothing is seen.
The stillness of the night takes all signs of their presence.
Disbands everything.
However, they are back again the next night.
The night after that.
Each night the static hums.
Each night you call to say good night.
Each night that I attempt to explain how much I love you.
Each night they wind together, our voices on the other end.
You thought I would have forgotten to tell you. I didn’t.
This was my thought last night on the phone. I picture it when we speak to one another in bed until one of us has to hang up.
I love you, Connor.
Happy Five Month.
