The silence after a missed call

Just sat with the phone in my lap for ten minutes after it rang once and cut out. No voicemail, no trace. I kept waiting for the hum of the line to come back—like how we used to wait for a plane’s transponder to reappear on the screen after a gap. The air was thick with what wasn’t said. Not anxiety, not grief—just the weight of something that almost happened. And then I laughed at myself, because I’m still listening for signals that don’t need to be heard.