DISCONNECTION

There was a time

when silence was not empty—

it was a room with a heartbeat.

We have lost that room.

Not burned, not buried—

no ash, no grave marker,

no ceremony to mark its passing—

only the quiet theft

of something too subtle to defend.

It slipped out

between notifications,

dissolved in the glow of glass,

eroded by the soft, relentless tide

of always-being-reached.

Once, we listened.

Not to reply,

not to sharpen the blade of our next sentence,

not to win—

but to arrive.

We arrived in each other

like travelers who had crossed weather,

who knew the cost of distance

and the holiness of presence.

Now we hover.

Half-born into moments,

half-vanished from them,

ghosts rehearsing attention

while our minds flicker elsewhere—

a thousand elsewhere’s,

each one thinner than breath.

I mourn the weight of a pause

that used to mean something.

The way a held silence

could stretch like dusk between two souls,

not awkward, not empty,

but full—

as if meaning itself were ripening

just out of sight.

Where did it go?

Who signed its ending?

There was no war for it,

no siren, no shattered skyline—

just a gradual forgetting,

a quiet surrender

to speed.

We traded depth for immediacy,

presence for proximity,

voices for echoes of voices

that never quite touch ground.

And now—

now even grief is hurried.

Even mourning has a scroll speed.

We swipe past sorrow

like it might inconvenience us,

like it might ask too much.

But I remember—

I remember when grief sat down beside you

and refused to leave

until you knew its name.

I remember when listening

was not a skill,

but a devotion.

You gave yourself to it.

You risked being changed by it.

And that—

that is what we buried

without knowing we were digging.

Not silence.

Not time.

But the courage

to be altered

by another human being.

So let this be a eulogy

for what left without a sound:

For conversations that did not fracture.

For attention that did not splinter.

For the sacred, terrifying act

of truly hearing.

Let it be said—

we once knew how.

We once stood still enough

to feel another life

arrive inside our own.

And if there is anything left

to resurrect—

it will not come back loudly.

It will not announce itself.

It will wait—

fragile as breath,

patient as dusk—

for someone, somewhere,

to choose

to listen again.