On the impact of the wind telephone

Today’s blog entry was written by Ally Klingelhoets.

The phone rings.

It's 5:45 in the morning. It's 9:20 at night. It's 2:15 in the afternoon. There's a familiar voice on the other end of the line, though it's unfamiliar now; stricken with panic, horror, shock, dismay. You are stricken with panic, horror, shock, dismay. Suddenly the days blur together. More calls are made, more calls are received; the world is a whirlwind of words meant to comfort and console and commiserate. You're afraid of silence, afraid of what your internal monologue may say once the external world calms down. But in time, it does. And you hear yourself telling yourself all the words you never got around to saying, sharing the thoughts you never thought to share, expressing the things you always meant to express. You wish there was a way to say them now.

The phone sits before you, and this time, the tears sting your eyes well before you touch the receiver.

You press it to your ear and hear the sudden silence of souls connecting across unknown planes, and you take everything inside of you and let it out. You listen to the nothingness, perhaps hearing every response as it might've been spoken. You listen, and you speak, and you listen.

Maybe you say goodbye. Maybe you're not ready to do that this time.

But you hang up the phone.

And things that were impossible yesterday seem just a tiny bit possible today.