I have an admiration—a silent, almost fearful wonder—for the ones who know how to disappear. Not the physical vanishing, no. But the disappearance from the small screen, the sudden, decisive burial of the luminous rectangle into the obscurity of a pocket or a purse.

It is an act of ferocious, almost unbearable generosity. A small, profound suicide of connection, performed in the name of a connection infinitely more fragile: the breathing human standing before them.
When the other person begins to speak—perhaps about the weather, perhaps about a splinter of the soul—the hand moves. It doesn’t hover. It does not glance down for one last, desperate flicker. It simply ends it. The phone, that bright, demanding limb of the self, is dismissed.

What happens then? The world contracts. The thousand distant, chattering voices retreat, leaving only the immediate, dangerous clarity of the present moment. The face, the eyes, the tremor in the voice of the speaker—these become the universe. The person who performs this small, sacred gesture, they are saying: “You are my current, my only, my terrible, beautiful now.”

It is a moment of pure, terrifying presence. A surrender. A recognition that the other is not a pause between notifications, but the entire, vast, demanding book. And for this, for this brief, deliberate act of choosing the real over the virtual echo, my admiration is a quiet, fervent prayer. It is the only true way to begin to listen. 🙏🏾

©️ Beatriz Esmer