SILENCE

"How Are you?"

She answered, “fine, you?”

The deafening silence already declared the answer. She stared blankly at the dark ceiling, hoping to find something interesting to see there, to engage her mind. But, it was, after all, dark. Continuous pings from her phone failed to attract her attention from the literal void. Fingers run into her hair as she closes her eyes. She was craving for the pampering touch for months now. 

She asked “do you miss me?”

Her voice faded away through the window, across the rainy, cloud covered sky. The monotonous sound of rain and sudden lightning made the weather dreary. The smartphone which knew her fingerprints better than herself was chiming with notification tone, waiting for her to touch it, but failing over and over. Maybe the phone understood because it went silent. Tears rolled down her cheeks but she didn’t try to wipe it away like always. There was no makeup to be ruined. A loud thunder tried to cover up her sudden outburst of pain, but failed. She rolled on her side and tried to let it all out in the form of warm tears. 

“Hey you OK? Don’t cry.”

She couldn’t stop sobbing. With her tangled up voice she said, “Why shouldn’t I? What took you so long?”

Maybe the phone thought that this was the perfect time to ease off some of her pain with the cute noises which she loved the most in this world. But, those pings went in vain. She sat up, looking outside the window. The cracking noise of thunder was somehow addictive.

She asked, “do you think not finding true love is painful or finding it and then losing it?”

In response to it the phone pinged once again. Finally she reach for the phone to open it. A smiling face icon appeared on the screen for face recognition, or maybe the phone was happy to see her again. It opened up. A mountain of unread messages was a witness of her distancing from the phone. 

She started to open up every single conversation and scroll through every text. Her fingers and eyes were paining now for continuously staring at the screen. But, she scrolled and scrolled. She tried her best and failed to find that one innocent and caring “How are you?” in this crowd of “wazzup babe” and “send nudes”.

The conversation she had in her head is the thing she really wants. This isolation had shown her that. But, she had already pushed him away a long time ago.

The bright LED screen now carrying a broken glass cover strewn across the darkness.