Silence

There is power in a smile, I often forget how much until faced with it. But there is power in silence to... a power to break those who wish for it too often. There is something about the way it sinks into your bones, into your senses until you can neither hear nor see what happens around you. There is a barrier that separates me from the rest of the world, a barrier I placed there over time, letting it beget itself as time passed.

“What are you doing out here?”

I trace patterns in the paint on the wall, unable to care enough to hear him for the moment. Let me come to terms with noise again, learn to listen the way I used to all the time.

“Richee?”

There's solidity behind me, structure to my right. There are barriers I place around me, and those that are build around me... It seems in these moments as if I have never moved, as if the world itself creates and was created while I sat here in the middle of it all and ceased to care.

“Being silent,” saves me from what I don't wish to see.

I break myself each day by admitting that I save myself, that it is necessary to save myself from something so... I can't say it's natural. If sound were natural it would take no effort, like breathing. Breathing makes sound, but only so faint that it does not disturb the silence around me, instead giving it a rhythm. Like the beating of my heart in my breast, the silence keeps time with life by superimposing itself onto my senses, onto my being, creating life.

“Did I make you angry?”

I hear you now – but the sound of my own heart drops away in listening to what you say. I have died along with the silence, for the rhythm of my heart has ceased to pound within my head.

“No.”

A beat; like silence, sound has a rhythm too – though perhaps much more demanding than that of the whisper I once had. Each thing has it's own purpose, and sound plays a part as well. The sound of a heart beating, or the subtle breathing of someone nearby. These are sounds I still managed to enjoy – they do not destroy this silence within me, the peace I have found to strengthen my bones against the winds of time. They help to build upon myself instead of corrode me like noise.

“Is everything okay?”

“I want things to be simple again...” no, not simple – silent.