Ghosts of Silence

The evening was particularly long; the sullen stubbornness of a rain washed street, the glaring neon lights of the motor vehicles suffused in the thick fog of a pompous weekend night out in the city.  The taxi jerked to a halt, jolting her out of her wistful reverie, and she forced herself to step out into the overwhelming crowd, knowing there was no escape from the engulfing numbness now. An overpowering disassociation overtook her, and she got the feeling that she was watching a vestigial self of her mingle with this new crowd of people – the all too happy picture of social fraternizing – engaging in forced conversation, and being awkwardly pushed into offering half-baked opinions about topics she couldn’t begin to care for, as the incongruous listlessness wore her patience thin and made her foot soles ache in frustration. Bewildered by the ecstatic commotion of voices around her, she found herself unconsciously looking for him again, as if her mind had a will of its own.

Now, after politely sipping on a drink she didn't like, and lying automatically in reply that she was “fine” to a person she didn't wish to talk to, she found herself retreating into the farther corners of her mind, and scanning the room to catch his gaze. Not meeting it, she was overcome once again with a specific loneliness – he wasn't around so she could lose herself in him and by natural consequence unfocus from the disastrously loud music drilling into her ear drums, he wasn't around to make her feel more comfortable in her anxious skin, he wasn't around to understand her look without explanation, he wasn't around to forgive her myriad inadequacies – and his absence continued to burn her heart, rather like the disgusting drink did her throat. Multiple parallel trajectories of thought, the grammar of which eluded her understanding, wove in and out of her mildly inebriated consciousness, threatening to overflow into the surrounding air of thoughtless revelry. She saw the words of her incoherent yearning waltz before her dazed eyes, mimicking the uncoordinated dance of the disco lights, the syntax of which spilled out the pages of her mind, shaping wickedly into the luring shadow of his smile. She fidgeted with her phone to overcome this anxiety, only to find herself fixating on the reason behind it compulsively, her fingers absentmindedly tracing a pattern of his name in the air. She felt as lost as the distrait drop of condensed air trickling down the outside of her glass, stalling for a second only to resume recklessly on its meandering course to the bottom, whereupon it would disappear into an insignificant pool of such misfit nobodies. That is what she would amount to in the end – nothing more than a melting puddle of wasted desires consumed in the heat of life.

A painful couple of hours later, she headed home, past the rambunctious gaggle of easily excited college kids, her lonely heels echoing on the pavement, its regular rhythm reminding her of the empty space carved out in the shape of him beside her – an excruciating emptiness outside that dug a similar hollow within. As she turned round the final corner to her apartment, she stopped in her tracks, willfully drowned out the pandemonium of the city lights and the steely stares of strangers, closed her eyes and wondered fondly of what he might be doing now – quietly absorbed in reading, perhaps in bed, whilst plucking at his nascent beard, or simply listening to music by the window, having shut his mind off the world for the remainder of the night. She gazed up at the distant depth of the skies, and wondered at the silence of the oceans, and wondered if at that precise moment, he too was gazing up at the stars from his abode, their shared solitude binding them together in that moment. Slowly, like a falling leaf, she felt a warmth in her bones – the knowledge of his stoic solitude seeped into her consciousness, its enduring spirit wrapping her in its comforting embrace. She took a deep breath, smiling at the visceral living memory of his laugh, marveling at how intensely vulnerable and yet safe she felt in the light of his fierce love. As she continued to walk, the warmth of his elbow brushed against her bare arm, and the touch of his breath whispering in her ear drove her to madness.