Dialing God From A Phone Booth At 2am

After tossing and turning for three hours with no expectation of sleep in my near future, I arise from my bed and decide I need to take a walk, clear my mind. The air is freezing and immediately my body goes numb. I like the feeling. I would smile if I could move my lips. I listen carefully to my footsteps, each one pounding louder against the pavement than its predecessor until it becomes all that I can hear. Pound, pound, pound. I have to remind myself that I’m connected to this sound, connected to the night, the air, the earth. I have to remind myself that I’m connected.

As a lone car passes, I am startled from my thoughts, and I look up to discover I’ve wandered to a place that I’ve never been before, a place I never knew existed. Suddenly I am so aware of how painfully cold I am. The numbness has turned into a burning. My toes feel as though they might fall off. I look around, trying to find a place where I could warm my hands for a few moments, a safe haven from the harshness of the night. There is only nothingness before me, nothingness behind me. Nothingness, and one solitary phone booth, standing clumsily in the middle of it all.

I walk over to it and push the door open with my frigid fingers. I stand inside for a few moments, listening to myself breathe. Instinctively, I pick up the phone. In the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, I have suddenly found myself in my own little confessional, ready to clear my soul. I’ve never been inside a real confessional, but have seen enough religion in the media to know how the process goes. I begin to dial. “Forgive me father, for I have sinned...”

Someone picks up on the other side, but remains silent. I know that it’s my turn to talk. So I do. It’s awkward at first, so I begin with idle chatter. “Sorry, it’s been a while....” I ask how his day was, but get no response. I start to talk about my day, leading to a novel length monologue about all the days that came before it. I am crying and laughing all at once and have no idea why. For hours I stand there chattering away on the phone. I ask questions and get no answers. I give answers to questions never asked. I talk about family and friends and life. On and on I drag the inside of me out, pulling the contents of my soul out through my mouth as though someone has caught them on a fish hook and is dragging them to the surface. At the tail end, I begin to feel satisfyingly empty.

Suddenly I stop talking. I stand in silence for a few moments again, listening to my breath rhythmically align to the breathing on the other end of the phone. In and out we breathe together. I’m caught off guard when he breaks the silence. “Hush” he says. There's a pause. The line goes dead. He’s hung up the phone and left me where I started, standing alone inside a phone booth in the middle of nowhere.

I begin to walk home, inexplicably knowing the way. I listen to my feet once again on the pavement. Pound, pound, pound. It grows softer as I near home, the air beginning to warm in the prospect of morning, the sound of a dial tone still echoing in my head.