The whitish glow of the moonlight illuminates the mud-gravel path that has been paced up and down repeatedly, amidst frequent late-night phone calls seeking solace from anyone that will pick up the phone in the early hours of the morning.
His voice is calm and soothing, just like I remember it.
Articulation has always been his strong point.
His words tug at the strings of my heart, filling the wells of my eyes to the brim with salty tears. He's captured what I feel astoundingly.
As I squeeze the cherry of my cigarette from the filter, sparks shoot in all directions on the rocky, gray stone beneath my feet. Wanderlusting back toward my house at the end of the 300-foot driveway, I stop and lean against the trunk of my father's Ford Focus.
I peer over the gray-blue metallic shell of the car, catching a glimpse of my own reflection from the dim cell phone light counting the airtime I'm using up. Luckily, it's Sunday, which means I can listen to his advice in its entirety.
"Take it for what it is," he exhales, "You can't make something of nothing."
Resting my elbows atop the rear license plate of the car, one lone tear escapes from a duct and splashes on the buffed exterior, separating into half-orb beads from the Rain-Ex applied weeks before. I wipe the moisture from the car, leaving no evidence of my momentary lapse into vulnerability.
The phone clicks dead, permitting the dead-night silence to ring through my ears.
