Static Between Us

Static Between Us

We speak in snow—

not the kind that falls,

but the kind that hisses

on a midnight screen.

Your voice arrives grainy,

a constellation of almost.

Between syllables, a hum

where meaning should live.

I hold the phone like a match,

tiny flame licking the wind;

Your laughter breaks up,

becomes dots and dashes

My heart can’t decode.

We used to be analog—

handwritten breaths,

Your palm is a dial I tuned

without thinking.

Now we buffer.

I can hear the room around you:

a chair sighs, a faucet ticks,

someone on a nearby street

argues with a taxi.

You are there, not here.

If closeness is a station,

We’ve drifted off-frequency,

driven into the valley

where mountains hoard

The good reception.

I try the old trick—

step near the window,

lift the device like an offering,

as if altitude could teach us

How to listen.

For a second, you’re clear,

your breath a warm wire,

your name unspooling clean

across the dark.

Then—shiver, scatter, ash.

What we keep survives the hiss:

Your almost-yes, my almost-home,

Two hands reaching through the weather

we can’t see, only hear—

the bright, stubborn crackle of hope.