I hate to break it to you—dialing your number feels like tracing a flatline. Every press of the keypad is a heartbeat I cannot feel, a pulse I cannot reach. Each number I punch in feels deliberate, like summoning something I am not sure exists anymore.

As I wait, suspended in silence, the world shrinks to the sound of nothing. The seconds stretch, elastic, impossible to grasp. The flatline hums beneath my skin, a pulse that is both mine and not mine, a reminder that waiting is its own torment.

The ringback tone echoes, a hollow refrain, bouncing off the walls of my own impatience. It mocks me with its rhythm, neither fast enough nor slow enough, perfectly tuned to my own rising anxiety.

I imagine you on the other end, not knowing, not caring. Or maybe you do, and the thought of that is worse. I cannot tell which is more painful—the absence of your voice or the possibility that your absence is deliberate.

When the phone finally rings, I hope you answer. I hope your voice cuts through the static, through the invisible barrier that has grown between us. But the unknown caller lingers, patient, silent, waiting like a shadow that will not leave.

I know it waits for you, waits for the moment you pick up, for the second our worlds collide again. And yet, each unanswered ring stretches longer, makes the line colder, the distance more absolute.

Every missed call is a scar on the invisible landscape between us. Every pause between rings is a reminder that connection is fragile, fleeting, and dangerously temporary.

I trace the outline of the flatline in my mind, each beep and silence like a memory that refuses to fade. I imagine your hand hovering over your phone, unsure, hesitant, and it twists something inside me that I cannot describe.

Time feels suspended. The world continues without me while I hover over a device that does not answer. The flatline does not wait, does not care. It hums with a neutral cruelty that I cannot escape.

I want to scream into the silence, to pierce through the static with the force of my own longing. But there is only stillness. Only the echo of nothing. Only the hollow rhythm that refuses to break.

The flatline has become more than sound. It is a presence. It is the absence of presence. It occupies the space you once filled and now refuses to leave.

I think of every conversation we never had, every word unsaid, every thought I didn’t share because I assumed you would always be there. And now that assumption is a weight I cannot bear.

Each unanswered ring reminds me that you were never mine. Each pause is a testament to your distance, your choice, or perhaps your indifference. The flatline is impartial—it does not care who waits or who longs.

I imagine the echo of your laughter replaced by the hollow hum of nothingness. I imagine your voice drowned by the static, your intentions dissolved into a void that I cannot reach.

I trace the flatline with my finger over the smooth surface of my phone, but it is unyielding. It does not bend to desire, to hope, to despair. It is a perfect reflection of the space you left behind.

I want to close my eyes and imagine you answering, imagining your voice spilling through the line, tangible and warm, cutting through the monotony of silence. But the fantasy dies the moment I open my eyes, confronted by the humming emptiness.

The flatline becomes a mirror of me—my longing, my obsession, my helplessness. I trace it endlessly, not for connection, but for acknowledgment, for proof that I am still capable of feeling something for you.

I think about what it would take to break the silence. To disrupt the flatline with a single, unexpected heartbeat. But I know that even if I did, it might not reach you. My desperation might never touch the other end.

And so I wait. Suspended in the nothingness, listening to the rhythm that is neither alive nor dead. It is a reminder that some connections do not revive, that some calls never return, and that some absences become permanent before you even notice.

I trace the flatline with trembling fingers, imagining the life that could exist if only you were here. But life refuses to bend to longing. Life continues in your absence, indifferent, merciless, patient.

The flatline teaches me a cruel lesson: waiting is an action, but it is also a surrender. Every second I linger is a surrender to hope, to obsession, to the hollow echo that mocks me with its rhythm.

And yet, despite the emptiness, despite the silence, despite the cruel impartiality of the line, I continue. I press the numbers, I hear the ring back tone, I wait for something that may never come. Because even in this hollow refrain, even in the flatline, there is a glimmer of life—my own heartbeat, stubborn and unyielding, refusing to surrender fully to the silence.