I let the dial tone play out, ringing through my mind in an incessant buzzing, cutting through the dimly light kitchen in fuzzy staccato beats of waiting, endless, dreamless waiting.
And I spill out those little tablets of self-punishment onto the counter, letting their glinting matte blue surface burn holes through my eyes, until I see nothing but raw red, and blackness, the combined enigma of the fire I could never stop, I could never control.
“He-llo?”
“Five, six, seven, eight…”
There is a silence, and I am praying you know what I am counting.
“It’s eight too many.”
I tilt my head back and swallow, my mouth curved into an acrid smile sewn out of the wires of denied hopes and shredded expectations, and I try not to tremble as the tears run over my hands in namesake trails of broken promises, the vows I dissipated with my cowardly hands and cowardly heart.
“I know.”