Work Text:
Once a week. That’s all we get.
One conversation.
One hour.
Once a week.
I’m thankful we get that much, I know people who don’t, I’ve been one of those people who don’t. But that doesn’t change the fact that it just isn’t enough. The freedoms it’s meant to be giving us feel more like chains that are chocking us every second surrounding that weekly reprieve.
To fit a weeks worth of conversion, of stories, of making sure the other is okay all into one hours worth of monitored, voice only chats is difficult. So much is missed because we ran out of time. Because something more important was mentioned.
Because we didn’t want to talk about it.
Experience tells me that for every, carefully chosen word they say there’s a hundred other things their leaving out. For better or for worse.
And I know, I can see it when I close my eyes that for every word I say. Every syllable I so much a breath during those sixty minutes they will spend hours antagonising over, trying to figure out exactly what it is I’m not telling them.
Once a week.
The mark on the calendar that I love and dread every time it comes up. Because it marks yet another hour spent listening to them tell me how normal everything back home is while I lie through my teeth to say the same.
We should be thankful that we get this much. We should be thankful that we’re allowed contact at all. And we are. Just being able to hear them. To hear the sounds of normalcy. To hear the sounds of home. Of the people I love. I am so thankful.
I am so thankful to know they’ll be okay.
Once a week.
It never feels like enough until you know it’s all you have left.
I look at my watch again.
Just a few more minutes. Just a few more minutes then I can hear them again.
3
2
1
“Hey! How’re you? Is the sound quality okay?”
“Hey! Yeah the sounds fine. No worse then normal, how’re you? How is everyone?”
They say there’s comfort in conformity. Comfort in the familiar and the routine.
I wonder if that’s why it was so easy to pretend everything was okay. To stick to the unspoken script.
5
“Looks like times almost up. These things just never feel long enough so they?”
4
“Never. I better let you go. Same time next week?”
3
“Of course. Wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
2
“Love you!”
1
“I love you too, bye.”
0
Goodbye