Words From the Dying

When I called in September at that pay phone, I was certain you wouldn’t answer. The fog enclosed the three-building “town” I found myself in. It blanked the flat land for miles. White. It felt so blissful to drive in. I rolled my windows down. I imagined how I’d tell you about it when you picked up, knowing that you wouldn’t. We roomed together Sophomore year and the last we “spoke” was a comment I left on your graduation post. You had no reason to answer. But as I drifted from rest stop to rest stop, I wished for a home I never had. And I remembered the comfort, however brief, I felt living with you. So in some whisper to the universe, I found myself in a phone booth, typing in your number that burned into my brain when you earnestly told me to remember it. Your loud eyes, boring into mine, too caring for their own good. It rang. And I held the corded phone with two hands like a lifeline.

“hello?”

  “hey”

It was quiet on the line, neither speaking, only breaths, For miles, all there was were their breaths. The fog and their breaths.

“d?”

She said nothing; she sucked in a sobbed breath hoping the phone hadn’t caught it.

  “yeah”

And tears fell, each chasing the other silently. She cried. She tasted home. Something she never had, but still lost.

I asked her how she was. We chatted, and I leaned against the booth’s slick side. I let myself slide to the floor. I let myself rest in a way I hadn’t since the kitchen table.

When the conversation came to a pause, she held for a moment before asking, what she thought she never would. Never could.

  “any chance you need a roommate?”

There was an understanding. The girl on the other line didn’t know all the details but knew if she was leaving, her mother must be gone.

“yeah I’ve got an extra room”

She smiled, in a way she hadn’t in a long time.

  “still in Chicago?”

“of course”

They said their goodbyes, and as she left the phone booth, she had somewhere to go for the first time she left her parents’ home, since she peeled herself from that table.

She had a home.