I pause and glance over the thinning lines of text I painted onto the world at three in the morning, and some permissive satisfaction dawns over my sunken eyes, pressing onto my chapped lips an illustrious symphony of unparalleled completion, undeniable accomplishment…
And then the silence shoots through my passive adoration, and all I hear is a muffled crackling on the other end, and I call, “Hello, hello?” but no one answers, and it is just me again, just me calling out to someone who will never answer, so I turn off the phone and bury deeper into my blankets, wondering if I’ll always be like this.