Idle Screen, Hungry Lights [Wreath]
The living room has that end-of-December hangover, soft and cluttered and exhausted, strings of cheap twinkle lights sagging like they’re rethinking their life choices,
Empty cups crowd the coffee table, a half-dressed tree leaning in the corner like a drunk uncle who ran out of stories and ran out of voices.
Wrapping paper shrapnel hides in couch cushions, the scent of pine and sugar still dragged through the air like a memory that doesn’t know it’s supposed to fade yet,
The sound is mostly heater hiss and fridge hum and the occasional car in wet snow outside, and in the center of it all sits your phone, screen black as a threat.
It lies face-up on the arm of the couch where you threw it when the last “Merry whatever” ding turned into empty air and typing bubbles that never arrived,
Spider-web hairline crack across the corner like a tiny white scar, a badge for all the times you swore you’d stop waiting and still somehow survived.
Holiday lights blink in rhythm against that dark glass, little reflections that pretend to be notifications for a second or two before they slip away,
Red, blue, yellow, white—each flicker kisses the screen and snatches itself back, a cheap little flirt with a device that hasn’t buzzed all day.
You watch it like a gambler watches a door, insisting you’re over it, that you don’t care if they call, that you really have better things to do with time,
Yet you keep half an eye on that cold rectangle anyway, measuring your worth in imaginary rings and imaginary chimes.
Every little light that splashes across it looks for one heartbeat like a message icon you know by muscle memory,
The reflection hits, your chest jumps, you realize it’s just the tree blinking on a timer, and you sink back into that heavy little parody.
Somewhere in the cushions there’s the ghost of past years, the version of you who checked that screen every thirty seconds and smiled like a fool,
Laughing at midnight selfies, drunk emojis, flirty typos, promises that next year would be different, that you were both done playing the fool.
You remember pressing your faces together for pictures only the two of you would ever see, turning the phone into a mirror and a confessional booth at once,
Drunk on cheap champagne and the illusion that love, like battery life, could be topped off before it burned itself out and pulled its little stunts.
Tonight, the only warmth is a throw blanket and the last inch of liquor in a glass you keep forgetting to drink,
Your thumbs itch to tap their name, to send some harmless nonsense like “Hope you survived your family” or “You up?” or “Think too much, can’t sleep, come over and help me not think.”Your brain holds an intervention and drags your hand back, reminding you how silence can slice cleaner than any sharpened word,
Reminding you that you are not supposed to go chasing shadows that already chose the dark, not supposed to beg for crumbs from a vanished herd.
The phone just lies there, practically smug, soaking in the light show like a bored stage,
It doesn’t care if the last message was a full-stop blowout or a quiet fade, it just waits for the next command, for the next emotional wage.
The tiny charging port yawns open like a mouth that’s tired of swallowing secrets for everyone in this town,
Blinking lights run across its surface like thought patterns, like the half-remembered shape of the person you were before they let you down.
You see your own face in that screen between flashes, eyes ringed by late nights and disappointed expectation,
The lights paint you in quick little strokes—now festive, now haunted, now just a human pinned under their own imagination.
For a second you almost don’t recognize yourself; you look older than you meant to, with that pinch at the corner of your mouth from all the forced cheer,
You look like someone who knows too many punchlines to the same old joke of investing in people who disappear.
The tree blinks steady in the corner, a cheap circuit doing its job without the slightest hint of heartbreak,
While you wrestle with whether to power down the device, bury it under a pillow, or admit you’re still hoping they’ll make your chest ache.
You thumb the side button and the screen flashes alive just long enough to confirm what you already knew:No messages, no missed calls, no digital ghosts crawling back with apologies or new truths.
You could call someone else and try to drown the echo with new noise, swipe through strangers until someone fills the hour,
You could message late-night exes or holiday-only “hey stranger” flings and let some familiar chaos flower.
Still, you just sit in that faded glow, letting the silence sharpen around you like a polished blade,
Letting blinking lights write Morse code across a dead panel, telling stories of the life you might have made.
There’s a kind of peace in the fact that nothing comes, a tiny mercy in the non-answer,
No passive aggressive “we should talk,” no sudden reappearance playing nice while carrying a slow-growing cancer.
They chose not to break the quiet tonight, and maybe that’s vile in its own way,
Yet it leaves you free to choose something else—your own mind, your own couch, your own messy little holiday.
You reach down, scoop the phone up, feel the chill of it against your palm like something almost alive,
The lights scatter across its surface again, painting over fingerprints and old notifications that didn’t survive.
You switch it off completely, let the panel go entirely dark, no more fake alerts from reflections pretending to be fate,
Then you drop it face-down on the coffee table so the next blink hits the back instead of staring you down while it’s late.
Outside, sirens wail somewhere far down the street, a couple argues in the hallway, some kid laughs three floors below,
The world keeps spinning its weird little snow globe drama whether you answer, whether you heal, whether you grow.
You pull the blanket higher, lean your head against the worn couch arm, watch the light string blink for its own amusement,
And you realize this might be the first winter night you just let things be unfinished, let the story rest without hunting for improvement.
You start talking to yourself in your head—fine, maybe out loud, the way people do when loneliness walks a slow circle under their skin,
You promise that tomorrow you’ll buy better coffee, open a window, clean up the wrapping paper wreckage and let new air in.
You don’t promise some Disney reboot of your life; you just promise to live something that isn’t pinned to whether that phone ever lights itself again,
And for tonight, that tiny decision glows brighter than any reflected bulb, a quiet victory that doesn’t need likes or hearts or ten out of ten.
The lights keep blinking on their preset cycle, looping the same little show until the plug gets pulled or the wire gives up,
But what they paint now in the black glass isn’t a pleading face or a pair of desperate hands around a cup.
It’s just you, a little bruised, a little wiser, resting in a living room that finally feels like it belongs to you more than it belongs to ghosts,
The unused phone resting silent, no longer altar, no longer enemy, just an object again on a table among crumbs and coasters and washed-out posts.
By the time you drift off half sideways on the couch, blanket crooked and the TV still on some menu screen you never picked from,
The phone has stayed quiet long enough for your nervous system to stand down, for the want to go comfortably numb.
The last thing you see before sleep takes you is the blur of colored lights bending in the dark window glass and that useless phone’s edge,
And for once, the only vow you make is to answer yourself first in the morning, to step out of the new year with your own name at the ledge.