The quiet after the call that didn’t go right

It’s 20:32 and I’m still listening to the gap between the man’s voice breaking and the silence after he said ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ I didn’t fix it. No one did. Just held space until the line went dead. I keep thinking about how he said ‘thank you’ like it was the only thing left to say. Old shoes on a rainy sidewalk — they don’t make noise, but they carry everything.