I won’t call you, but I will answer. You’re not gonna call because you know I’ll answer.

For my call log, it had been two months. For me, it seemed like the line only went dead yesterday.

You were sitting in our usual corner of our favorite coffee shop, trapped behind a glass wall as the rain poured through the avenue. 

The warmth is there—the rich, heavy aroma of dark roast brewing through the sweet steam of freshly baked pastries. It filled every inch of the air, yet somehow left a hollow space where the soft, vanilla notes of my perfume used to sit beside you.  

You tried calling me. Seeing your name register through the screen of my phone, I answered. Knowing it was you whom I was talking to, I hung up the phone the moment you asked me to meet you there.

Because how can someone ask that so casually when you two were certain that it ended for good?

After the short statics that filled the line, silence swallowed everything; including the words I wanted to drop on air. 

No calls. No ghost of a text message. No chat bubbles that appear from time to time.

I thought that was it. I convinced myself I was standing right at the doorway, ready to take that last step away from you. But I couldn’t run away, and I couldn’t move forward either. I’m stuck waiting under the shelter of your cold porch, waiting for you to tell me to finally walk away, or to ask me to stay. So I waited, I satiated my longings for months that dragged like a millennium. 

After all, I will still wait for you knowing that you will also do the same for me.

Those silent nights stripped away all my pride. They stretched my midnights into long, open-ended questions that I knew I couldn’t answer on my own. 

Beyond the line that once held our softest laughter and bitter tears is a part of me that still desperately yearns to bridge the distance between us—a wish that I couldn’t seem to sate by myself, and a fragment we couldn’t seem to build without trial-and-errors.

When morning arrives, the sunlight exposes every raw, vulnerable part of me, blinding in its clarity. No matter how hard I try to protect myself, my hopes always melt away the armor I built. Yet beneath all these defenses—what I truly crave for, is for you to crash through the walls I’ve put up.

But how could you ever reach and tear them down when you’re trapped behind the walls of your own, waiting for someone to help you break free.

The weight of silence grows too heavy without us realizing. We’re trapped inside our own momentum, and we will always be like that no matter what. At this point, no matter how much we yearn for each other, we can’t seem to salvage what has already been lost for good.

Maybe, the paradox lies between us wanting to return each call like it used to be. Or maybe, it lies within the fact that we both know, it’s not gonna happen—because it’ll hurt, and the cycle will repeat itself the way we hated, the way we told ourselves we’ll never tolerate.

I hated myself for tolerating it. I hated every moment I spent running back to you just because the world felt too quiet and no one else was there to hold my hand. And I despised you for doing the same exact thing—using me like a safety net, and a bitter last resort.

But this time, I won’t call you. I will not let you feed my longings just to feel needed, nor will I let my weakness pull you under again.

I won’t reach out. I won’t beg. I won’t be the reason we break ourselves all over again.

But if my phone screen ever lights up with your name, I will run to the nearest bench and press the phone to my ear, just to absorb your voice as it passes through the line.