By Kip Knott

“. . . hear me? I’m . . . home . . .” Jenny’s voice keeps dropping in and out during her weekly call from Spain. Fragments of her words crackle in my ear like the electricity that flows through the power lines looming over our apartment. She’ll be home in little more than two days after spending a whole semester studying abroad. And in less than a month, we’ll finally be married.

 “What are you saying?” I ask when the silence goes on too long. “You keep breaking up.”

“That’s what . . . to say,” she says between the inference.

“I’m trying to understand . . .” I say, stopping short when I hear my own words reverberate back to me.

“Hello? Are you there?” I hear her ask, her words and mine tangling in the delay that comes with distance.

“I’m here!” I yell into the phone. “I’m not going anywhere!”

“I have to tell . . .” I think I can hear her crying somewhere in the spaces between her words and the static.

“Jenny, what is it?”

“I met . . .”

“Who did you meet?”

“He’s studying . . .”

“Who? Studying what?”

“We need . . . the wedding.”

“I’m going to hang . . .” I begin to say before she interrupts.

“Don’t hang up! I . . .”

“I’ll call right back,” I try to explain, hoping a new connection will clear everything up.

“No!” she yells. “Just listen to me.”

“Ok,” I say, taking a deep breath and holding it.

“I’m staying . . . I’m sorry . . .” Jenny says before the call drops.

After a moment of listening to her words echo farther and farther away from me into a bottomless silence, I finally say, “I hear you.” 

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Kip Knott is a writer, poet, teacher, photographer, and part-time art dealer living in Ohio. His writing has recently appeared in Best Microfiction 2024 and The Wigleaf Top 50. His most recent book of poetry, The Misanthrope in Moonlight, is available from Bottlecap Press. You can follow him on Instagram at @kip.knott and read more of his work at http://www.kipknott.com.