Radio Silence

Dead air.

That's what it feels like now. No. No, that's not right. That's what it always was, right from the start, in varying degrees. Just dead air. Static. Radio silence.

But it was alright, for a while. Those glorious bursts of noise; sparks of conversation, feelings, so close, so intimate that they seemed to glow. They made you happy. They made you feel safe, wanted. You lived for that. But it didn't stop the static flooding in. Too much white noise, even among the sparks. You ignored it, pushed it away. You tried so hard to convince yourself that it was alright.

It wasn't. Too much static seeping in for too long. The dead air grew heavy; it started pressing down on you. Too long spent craving those dwindling sparks. Outside noise started feeding in. Too much for you to bear. The silence growing heavier with each passing day as you were forced to listen to all that wonderful, painful noise.

Finally, you couldn't take it any longer. You broke through the silence; you finally made contact. But it was too late. It was too late and you couldn't maintain it. Instead, the silence grew heavier. It crushed you. Too late you realised it, and even though you tried so hard to keep that fleeting connection, it was overwhelmed by the static. Too much for too long. Too little, too late.

More dead air. It's getting harder and harder to hear anything now. The neverending buzz of the static. Noise still feeds in from the outside, familiar and otherwise. It doesn't matter, and it does matter. You're torn between listening and trying to tune it out. It hurts to hear it, but sometimes the silence is just too heavy to bear. It's starting to get hard to tell the difference. It's painful either way, the differences between the pains subtle and indistinct.

Maybe it's been so long now that static is all you can deal with. It feels safe there somehow. It hurts, but it hurts less than opening the channel. Letting all of the noise flood in. However wonderful it may be, you're terrified of it. Too many sounds blending together; beautiful, hideous, tantalising, unbearable noise.

So you hide in the static. You breathe the dead air.

You wish it had been different.

You wish it had been better.

Could you have changed it?

In the end, it could have been your fault. You let the static continue. You didn't break through in time.

Would it have changed anything if you had?

It doesn't really matter now. It's over. Done. Dead air is all that lies in between you.

It ends the way it probably began.