The Soundtrack of Waiting (Are we over?)
Every room has its own metronome. At the laundromat it was the quarters dropping, one after another, the clink that measured out how long until the clothes came back warm. At trivia it’s the buzzers—plastic buttons that pretend to arbitrate knowledge but really just measure how fast you can press before doubt. At night it’s the three dots on a phone screen, the ellipses pulsing like a tiny heartbeat that might mean confession or nothing at all.
Silence, too, has a sound. The air shifts after someone leaves a room, like a record needle lifting. The pause after a joke that doesn’t land. The hollow click of an appliance settling into off.
I’ve started to think of my life as a playlist of these waiting sounds. The hum before the power goes out. The throat-catch of cicadas right before rain. They’re not music exactly, but they’re proof that time has a texture, that waiting has a soundtrack, and that sometimes the smallest sounds carry the most weight.
Jake’s laugh rising before I know what’s funny, and I’m left in that gap trying to catch up to his joy—the sound of being half a beat behind someone you love. Soon that laugh will echo from a different room, a different city. The sound of his door closing for the last time. I’m already listening for it, that particular click that will mean childhood is over, that will mean the house will learn a new kind of silence. There’s no sound for the moment you realize you can’t hold anything together just by listening hard enough.
The news anchor’s voice changing pitch right before breaking news—that quarter-tone drop that means everything’s about to shift.
The washing machine’s off-balance thunk that means I need to redistribute the load or accept it’s going to walk itself across the floor, making that dragging sound like something trying to escape.
Tonight I think of how I’ve spent so much of my life in suspense. Waiting for the other shoe—not the drop itself, but the whisper of leather against air as it falls. That suspended moment when you know something is coming but not when, not how hard it will hit. The anticipation becomes louder than any impact could be, filling the silence with the weight of what hasn’t happened yet.
Waiting for someone to finally say what they mean—the inhale before confession. Waiting for the country to remember how to talk to itself. The sound of that waiting is cable news on mute in every airport, every gym, every waiting room—mouths moving, crisis scrolling, everyone watching without listening. The sound is comment sections loading, notifications pinging, the algorithmic hum of people screaming into voids that echo back exactly what they already believed.
Right now we’re all waiting to see if we’ll land this—whatever this is. This experiment in staying together when everything’s pulling apart. And the sound of that waiting is a collective held breath that’s been going on so long some people have forgotten they’re not breathing normally. It’s the crackle of tension before lightning grounds. The whistle of something falling that hasn’t hit yet.
When I look up and try to connect, it feels like even the universe is waiting with us: can we hold still long enough to hear what's actually happening?
Sometimes, when I’m too tired to fight it, I let myself hear it all. The buzz before the power shifts—that frequency most people miss.
I remember the sound of the lock clicking when Paul would come home—or the absence of that click, which sounded like nothing but felt like everything.
His key in the lock sounds different depending on his mood. When he’s happy, it slides in clean. When he’s tired, it scrapes. When we’d been fighting, it fumbled—metal on metal, trying and missing, trying again. I could predict the night ahead just from that sound.
The whole country feels like this now. Like we’re all sitting in separate waiting rooms, listening to different frequencies, trying to predict when our number will be called. Some of us hearing threat where others hear static. Some of us hearing what’s coming while others hear nothing wrong at all.
Where silence means peace or means danger depending on what you’ve learned to listen for. Where the same ringtone means “finally” or “oh god not now” depending on whose name appears on the screen.
The news holds its breath. Anchors pausing half a beat longer before saying “breaking news,” like they’re not sure whether this story will bring us together or split us further apart. The emergency alert tone on phones cuts through conversation with a sharpness that makes everyone look around, checking faces, trying to read whether this time it’s weather or something that will require us to choose sides.
Even church bells sound different now—the same bronze, the same tower, but somehow thinner and tinny, like they're ringing into emptiness. Small towns where everyone used to know each other now hum with the frequency of neighbors who’ve stopped making eye contact, who’ve discovered they’ve been living next to strangers all along.
The country sounds like a dinner table where someone just said something that can’t be taken back. Is this the moment when everything splits apart? I can taste it in the words. The metallic tang of a frequency divide getting wider every day. Some voices saying “we can still fix this” while others are already packing, already planning, already writing off the possibility that we’ll ever sit at the same table again.
I keep listening anyway. To the low thrum of what hasn’t happened yet. To Paul typing and deleting—I can hear it even when I’m not in the room, even when his phone is silent, I swear I can hear the hesitation in his thumbs. To the country humming at a frequency that feels wrong, but maybe I’m wrong about the frequency. To my own heartbeat in the gap between question and answer—thump-pause-thump like morse code for “please” and “not yet” and “just tell me.”
The ambient hum of potential energy—everything that could happen, about to.
The dryer beeps. My clothes are ready.
But I sit here another minute, listening to the machine’s final rotation slow to silence. The drum turning slower, slower, the fabric tumbling making that specific sound of cotton finding stillness.
Just to make sure it’s really finished.
Just to make sure I heard it right.
Just to hold onto this moment before I have to fold what comes next.