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May 17, 2026
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has anyone heard?
beep beep beep
beep beep beep
The sound of the dial tone fills the strange stillness in the air.
A stressful sound that makes you want to claw at your skin,
like waiting for something that you know will never come.
The blaring repetition of the beeps makes them feel almost…
deafening within the eerie silence.
Like the high pitched tone in your ears after a bomb goes off,
the sound that never fully fades away.
The beeps never stop.
An endless tone of hopelessness.
Helplessness.
Red splotches of fingerprints are smeared across the phone,
as it sits abandoned,
hanging off the hook by its fraying cord.
Curtains billow in the early morning breeze,
flapping gently as they wave their final goodbyes.
Shattered shards of window lay strewn across the floor,
glittering like diamonds in the sun’s golden glow of dawn.
With cold hands and eyes like a doll,
devoid of feeling or sight,
there is no movement indicative of life.
Maybe things could have ended differently,
if they only picked up the phone when it rang.
— hwilliamsog, May 17, 2026
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About This Poem
Style/Type: Free verse
Review Request Direction: [This option has been removed]
Editing Stage: Not actively editing
Critiques
Whiskey and Ink
4 weeks ago
I'm happy I stumbled onto…
I'm happy I stumbled onto this piece. Even though it's been up for a month, I just had to leave a comment because it left such a haunting, powerful impression on me.
You did an incredible job of taking a common sound—a phone dial tone—and turning it into a source of pure dread. The lines 'A stressful sound that makes you want to claw at your skin, like waiting for something that you know will never come' hit like a physical punch. It is so grounded, honest, and painfully relatable.
Your imagery in the second half is stunningly cinematic. The contrast between the violent tragedy (the shattered glass, the fingerprints) and the calm morning (the curtains waving goodbye, the glass glittering like diamonds) is beautiful and heartbreaking. And that final line—'if they only picked up the phone when it rang'—is a perfect, devastating conclusion. It grounds the entire tragedy in a single, missed action.
If I could offer one small piece of adivece.
your poem has such a raw, gritty, atmospheric tension to it. In the stanza about the eyes like a doll, lines like 'devoid of feeling or sight' and 'no movement indicative of life' feel a little clinical, almost like a medical report. I think you're such a great visual writer that you don't even need to explain it to us—just 'eyes like a doll' already tells us everything we need to know. Trust the power of your own imagery!
Thank you for writing this. It’s a deeply moving, unforgettable piece of poetry."
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