Short Stories/Essays/Poems

Silence 

Definition: absence of sound

I gave your things away. A shirt. A towel. A poem. Words. I emptied the room of your presence that clung to the walls of my home. They had become cold and hard like in our last conversation. The phone call ended in silence, the unanswered questions lingering in the air. Nothing was said, not a soft cry, no sigh, not a sniffle, not even a whisper. Words had no place in the moment. A quiet fell. We let the silence surround us and watch it fill our minds and mouths. And because to utter words would mean to pull apart the neat invisible stack of promises, we made to each other for a house built with sand. We let the quiet stand in the space between us. We watched it grow roots, become life, take shape and entirely form. The silence became a thing of its own, with a life of its own. 

Everything in the room remained as you left it, carrying the mark of stillness. Your shirt, on the hanger. Your towel, on the rack in the bathroom. Your poems, unseen voices on the walls and in my head. The heaviness of the memory pins me down and haunts me day and night. When we quarrelled, we would often mend the brokenness with a quick phone call. “I’m sorry” you would say. “I’m sorry” I would respond. There was none that day, the next day, or the day after. Silence is a language too - a language so total and true. 

I can no longer participate in life. My world is filled with an impossible heaviness, a heaviness that can swallow mountains into valleys. It has been several days since I last ate properly. Not since you left, and everything became still. The sand house washed away, and my world quickly disintegrated–falling apart, piece by piece. I sit in the half-light of the morning listening to the sounds from outside pour in. I hear the women behind my window, talking, gossiping, and laughing loudly. I envy their joy. The sounds of their happy voices drifted towards me punctuating the quiet. I hear the men, exchanging loud football banter and political conversations. Even though I am surrounded by simple pleasures, I can’t see past the silence. I cry and cry some more. I cry until there’s nothing left. Something inside me closes and folds. I have lost my grip on the world.

And because I have only known myself with you, no one knows who I am anymore, not even myself. Sometimes I pretend you are here with me, body, and flesh. Not your body turned into words. Not poems on paper. I don’t know what your voice sounds like anymore. I don’t know what you smell like anymore. I know I am confused, and you are gone but the memory of you won’t leave. There are glimpses of you, glimpses of us, on the fringes of my mind - just out of reach. So near, it's practically out of reach.  The memory of you, the memory of us, refuses to fade away. Because it’s hard for me to accept myself without you, I don’t like the person I have become without you. This person, stumbling and wobbling in the dark, in search of a ray of light, of hope. Silence is a language too.

It’s 3 am, it’s cold here now, and my pain is heavy, sitting in my belly like a stone. I am fading in and out of my thoughts, trying to catch up with myself. I can barely see where my thoughts are going. I have been up for hours, I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept in days, just lying here watching the clock go tick, tick, tick. Time drags by slowly. My mind sinks into a place far away from here and now.

Word by word, letter by letter, the silence broke. I began writing letters to unfold the past and present, trying to untangle the thread ball of memories, trying to let go of the silence that enveloped me like a shroud. Letter by letter, the words emptied me of the silence. When I began writing, blurry images of you appeared in my mind. I hated my fractured mind for blurring the memories, for trying to dissolve you into nothingness. I am not exactly sure when; I remember in fragments, but I know it’s the last time I saw you. You are sitting on the chair opposite the bed, right hand folded into an almost fist around the pen, lost in a world of words, trying to write another poem about me, about us. Write us into perfection. I understand now that you were trying to write the pieces of us that have come undone into permanence. 

I remember the poem in fragments

“Dear light, this morning, I found a home in the spaces between your fingers and I named it after you”

I blink and it’s all gone, a fragment of my imagination, truncated by reality. Tick, tick, tick.

The one letter became many, all of them unread. Words filled with tears wrapped tight with hope like the promise of the sweetness of candy. Words holding on to hope out of thin air. I’m wondering why someone avoided responding to others' pain, why someone would leave pain where their heart was yesterday. I’m wondering how love and silence could be two sides of the same coin. I am an ocean of unanswered questions, standing in the space where silence grows, caught between here and there.

Language is silence, becoming voice, becoming meaning, becoming words. This is to say, silence is the mind filled with voices, unspoken words trapped in the mind and throat. Silence is the disappearance of oneself. I have known absolute quiet, but this silence is a foreign country. Silence is a language too - a language laden with unspoken words bearing its own truth. 

I swallowed the pain of our memories, and silence lives in me.

Papa’s chair sat on the front porch of the house. It stood still and unmoving as the children watched from a distance. Their mother had instructed them not to sit on their grandfather’s chair. Most afternoons, Papa would sit in the chair, eyes fixed on something in the distance, holding his black square radio to his ear. Now and then, the radio would become silent, and he would have to shake it or tap the top to get it to work again.

 Today, Papa was not seated on the chair. He wasn’t wiping the hands of the chair clean with the back of his arm. He wasn’t cocking his head from side to side as he listened intently to the voices floating from the radio. Today, Papa’s brown wooden chair stood still and unmoving in the middle of the porch. 

The children walked with small, light steps toward the chair. Kweku led them, Maame followed, and Aseda crawled swiftly after them attempting to catch up. Kweku hesitated as they approached the chair, looked over his shoulder, glanced to the left and right, took a deep breath, and reached to touch it. The chair was a brown, glossy object with poorly shaped arms and legs and rough edges.

Papa would spend most evenings sitting in his chair with the kids at his feet, telling stories in a clear, steady tone. He told the children about the great wars of their ancestors, and they listened to him with rapt attention. They paid close attention to the cracked old voice as he talked about the forest creatures that come out only at night. Today, there will be no nighttime stories. 

Nobody was allowed to touch the chair or sit on it. Aseda had crawled close to the chair several times but never touched it. Her little infant brain understood her mother's directions. Kweku was surprised that nothing happened when he touched the chair. Maame touched Kweku as he touched the chair to be sure he was still alive. The warnings from Grandfather and Mother made it appear as if something terrible would happen if they touched the chair. They had imagined that touching it would paralyze their limbs and block their throats.

Infused with courage, Kweku sat down and smiled. He took a deep breath and gently exhaled. Maame rose on tiptoes. Aseda stopped crawling in the distance and looked up at her brother, her eyes filled with confusion. A car blasted in the distance, and the horn could be heard from the gate. They turned to see Mother approaching them, her steps measured. Kweku knew one thing for certain: Mother was biting her anger. Something terrible was going to happen. He tightened his grasp on the chair's arm and closed his eyes.

By Abena Maryan