Shayan Afzal

I was tired of the noise.

It was not loud at first. It was small and clean and lived inside glass. A light on the phone. A message. A number beside an app. Then another. Then the laptop woke and the room filled with other rooms.

Everyone had something to say. Most of it was nothing.

I sat at the table and looked at the black screen. My face was in it. It looked older than it should have. Not old. Just used.

Outside, the morning was plain. Cars went by on the wet road. A man in a gray coat crossed against the light. The sky was the color of dishwater and the buildings held it without complaint.

I made coffee. I did not hurry. The water boiled and the grounds rose and fell. That was a real thing. It took the time it took.

There had been days before this. Days without the little red marks. Days when a person could leave the house and be gone. Truly gone. You could walk for an hour and no one knew where you were. You could miss a call and nothing broke. You could sit in a diner with a cup of coffee and hear only cups and forks and the low talk of strangers.

I wanted time to move back. Not all the way. Just enough.

Back before every quiet place had been filled. Back before everyone carried the whole world in a pocket and called it life. Back before silence became suspicious.

The phone lit again.

I watched it for a while.

Then I turned it face down.

The room did not become silent. The pipes knocked. A car passed. Somewhere, someone dragged a chair across a floor. But those sounds belonged to the world. They came and went.

I drank the coffee while it was still hot.

For a few minutes, no one wanted anything from me.

It was enough.