Nightly phone-calls had become a real downer. Instead of silence or snapping there was now a dwindling, flat hiss of available communication space.

Fucking perfect timing for his phone to begin dying - he thought - and only last week it had been hers. What were the chances? It was as if we’d transplanted our hearts into the phones to bicker for us in metal instead of flesh. Metal was better, metal couldn’t hurt as much.

So now we had to yell at each other, unnecessarily, like two kids holding string-connected cans to their ears. Pulling, pulling, shouting, shouting – what did you say?

While all the while through pain and repetition the string unraveled around the middle. Between the two, untwirling, the line getting tighter and tighter and thinner and finer; flicking up the dust of itself in the waning light of a place which was starting to lose its name the further we leant back to keep the string taut.

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