In the cathedral of her solitude,
she holds the phone like a rosary of wire,
each coil a prayer spiraling into darkness,
each ring a heartbeat that refuses to die.
The crimson light baptizes her in longing—
not the harsh glow of emergency,
but the warm pulse of blood through veins,
of life insisting on its presence
even in the hollow chambers of night.
Her face dissolves into pixels and shadow,
a digital ghost haunting her own story,
while the receiver burns against her ear
like a brand, like a promise,
like the last word of a conversation
that began before she was born.
What voice travels through copper arteries?
Her mother's lullaby, fractured by distance?
A lover's goodbye, echoing through years?
Or perhaps the universe itself,
whispering its secrets through static,
through the spaces between sounds.
The cord becomes her umbilical tether
to a world that exists only in memory,
in the phantom vibration of calls
that will never come,
in the silence that speaks louder
than any words ever could.
She breathes into the mouthpiece
and exhales her own echo—
a woman calling herself home
across the infinite red expanse
of disconnected lines,
of hearts that beat in different time zones,
of love that refuses to hang up.
In this scarlet sanctuary,
she discovers the holiness of waiting,
the sacrament of an empty line,
the resurrection that lives
in every dial tone,
every pause,
every moment of almost-connection.
The night wraps around her like a prayer shawl,
and she becomes the prayer itself—
a signal searching for its frequency,
a question learning to love
its own unanswered silence.
