Telefonzelle

I happened to see a phone booth at the edge of the street, as if the city had forgotten it.

The glass dull, the metal cold. And still it seemed as if it were waiting. Day after day. Month after month. Year after year.

Then a ringing.

First soft, as if it were only in my memory.

Then sharper. More urgent.

The city kept moving, but inside me everything grew slow. My steps lost their rhythm. As if someone had turned down the sound of the world, only so that this ringing could have room.

I stood before it.

The light inside flickered.

And suddenly I had the feeling that it was not the phone booth ringing but something in me.

I picked up the receiver.

Silence.

For a second I thought I had imagined it all.

And in that very second something tore open: as if an old tape were running backwards faces, sentences, doors that will never open again.

My eyes grew wet before I even knew why.

I held the receiver tight, as if it could save something.

Not the past only this one moment.

Then the ringing was gone.

And what remained was only my breath in the plastic of the receiver.

I wished our ending had not happened here.

Not behind glass.

Not in a cell.