Is there a difference between a call and an echo?
A reflection on letting go of what no longer serves me.
A drink. Your favorite drink sits in the back of my fridge.
It’s been there for some time now, at first in the front and eventually pushed around and rearranged, so that I lost sight of it each time I opened the door. I eventually stopped looking for it. The day I picked it up for you, it was front and center. Mocking me, calling my sincerity stupid. There it was on the third shelf of my fridge, nestled between some to-go sauces, when what I had pictured was it being in your hand the minute I grabbed it out of the cooler in the studio.
That was weeks ago, somehow it’s managed to play hopscotch between the shelves. I noticed it today. I thought eventually someone would throw it out for the same reason it would be preserved till the next time we saw each other, no one would drink it. Nope. No one cared enough to discard it or asked who it was for.
Meanwhile, I’m looking for something to satiate my desire for salt, and as I lift a leftover container, I see it. The drink doesn’t mock me this time, I don’t think I even heard what it could’ve said because it no longer served as a placeholder for the disappointment I likened to your name.
It was just a drink that no one would touch, that you didn’t ask for, that you didn’t even know I picked up for you. Just a gesture that stemmed from a thought based on a memory of how it made you light up that one time you ordered it.
And suddenly I’m not hungry for some quick salty fix. I pulled out real food that would nourish me, hearty stew and rice. Subconsciously, we always know what we need.
Is an echo an echo because no one answers the call? Or is a call an evolved echo?