There’s a ghost on the other end of the line.
I can hear her breathing. I heard her words a few days ago. They were beautiful and lyrical. Her voice soft but imbued with feminine power. It was musical and romantic with notes of action, mystery and wonder.
But it’s like she can’t hear me, can’t see me, doesn’t know I exist. She just orbits in a space and time that occasionally intersects with mine, disembodied but floating by like a ship too tall to see my little dingy bobbing in her wake, passing me by. I toot my horn a few times but I just get the sad echo of my own thoughts coming back at me; lonely and pathetic.
Hello? Are you there? Are you listening but just hope I go away?
I pour a glass of wine. Slice an apple, a few fresh strawberries from the open air market by the canal, cubes of pecorino cheese and strips of salami from our Roman holiday. My heart is a sunken shipwreck that maybe good food and alcohol can float back to the surface.
In time, maybe I’ll stop asking where she went and why and, hopefully, forget her.