Longing Landline

The rotary phone rested like a fossil on the corner of Clara’s walnut side table, its beige plastic faded to the color of bone. The coiled cord lay limp, a spiral of forgotten conversations. Dust clung to its edges, but she couldn’t bring herself to wipe it away. It had become a kind of altar—silent, sacred.

Clara sat beside it, nursing a cup of tea gone cold. Her fingers hovered over the dial, tracing invisible lines from one number to the next. She could still feel the weight of it beneath her thumb, the slow, deliberate spin, the click-click-click as the dial reset. That sound had once marked the rhythm of her Sunday evenings.

It hadn’t rung in years.

Not since him.

She’d thought about throwing it out more times than she could count. Landlines were obsolete, relics from another lifetime, like cassette tapes and Sunday newspapers. But whenever she reached for the cord, ready to yank it from the wall and be done with it, a knot formed in her chest—tight, insistent. Like cutting the cord would be more than physical. Like she’d be severing something invisible, yet vital.

Something still holding on.




Ten Years Earlier

"You’ll call?" Her voice had barely risen above the whisper of rain on the fire escape.

Daniel turned from where he was zipping his suitcase, his mouth curving into that crooked half-smile that always made her breath catch. He stepped closer, cupped her cheek with fingers that smelled faintly of ink and coffee. "Every Sunday. Like clockwork."

And he had. For a while.

Seven o’clock, every Sunday evening. The phone would ring, sharp and sudden, and Clara’s heart would leap before she even reached for it. She’d settle into her favorite armchair, the receiver pressed tight to her ear, the spiral cord stretching as she crossed one leg over the other and let his voice wrap around her like a blanket.

They talked about everything and nothing: his leaky faucet, her new recipe failures, the neighbor’s annoying wind chimes, the way his new city always smelled faintly of cinnamon. There were long pauses filled with unsaid things, and yet the silence between them never felt empty. It felt like breathing.

Until one Sunday, the silence stayed.

No ring. No voice. Just the slow tick of the clock and the hum of the refrigerator.

She waited. Called once, then again. Left a message. Nothing.

Weeks passed. Then months. The silence hardened. Grew sharp.

She stopped calling.




Present Day

Clara stared at the phone. It looked both smaller and heavier than she remembered. She curled her fingers under the base, hesitated, then let them fall away. Her tea had long since gone cold, forgotten on the table.

She told herself it was foolish. People moved on. Maybe he had a wife now. Children. Maybe he had forgotten all about the woman he used to call every Sunday evening. About the landline with the soft crackle in the background. About her.

But the air tonight buzzed faintly, like the electric hum before a storm. Familiar. Charged.

She reached for the receiver.

Her fingers found the numbers without thinking, dialing from memory—their rhythm etched into muscle and marrow. As the dial spun back, she held her breath.

One ring.
Two.
Three—

"Hello?"

Her heart jolted.

The voice was older, grainier around the edges, but undeniably his. Daniel.

She froze. The words she had rehearsed—casual, distant, strong—vanished.

A beat of silence.

Then: "Clara?"

How did he know? After all this time, all these silent years—how did he still know her voice without hearing it?

She swallowed. Her throat felt dry. "You didn’t call."

A breath. Soft. Not guilty. Not defensive. Just… worn.

"I couldn’t."

"You didn’t want to?"

"No. I wanted to too much."

Her eyes stung. She pressed her palm against her knee, grounding herself in the present. She didn’t want to go back—not to the ache of being forgotten. Not to the questions that had circled her for years like wolves.

And yet…

"I still have that mixtape you made me," he said, his voice a quiet thread.

She blinked, startled. "Seriously?"

"Track one still skips halfway through, remember?"

A laugh slipped out of her, unsteady. "That’s the dumbest thing to keep."

"I keep a lot of dumb things. You were never one of them."

The air shifted—lighter, somehow. They didn’t talk about the silence. Not directly. No apology, no rehashing of the past. Just small things, like petals dropped along a path.

Daniel had switched to tea, finally admitting coffee made him jittery. Clara had learned to bake sourdough during the lockdown years and now kept starter in the fridge like a pet. There was a stray cat who’d adopted her porch as its throne. He told her about a short story he’d written that he’d never shown anyone. She told him how the house creaked differently at night now, as if remembering new things.

When they finally said goodbye, there were no promises. No plans. Just the quiet understanding of something mended, something no longer unraveling.

Clara placed the receiver down slowly, as though breaking a spell.

The phone sat still. Silent once more.

But it no longer felt like a tomb.

It felt like a bridge.

She didn’t need answers. She didn’t need declarations.

Some things—some connections—didn’t need to be spoken to be real.

Some stayed humming beneath the silence
.