When You Stopped Speaking to Me

Something I wrote when someone who was very dear to me first stopped speaking to me.

Silence is the loudest sound of all:

In it you hear the sound of shattering hearts and whispers left on solemn lips, their rosebuds turned down and eyes darkening like stormy skies, the tears pouring down like fat raindrops who are bloated, greedy and unyielding. In the silence the inside of your head gets loud: the buzz words come like swarming flies, and you hear of loss and agony, anguish, bitterness, jealousy, and desire. The word longing is a neon sign on a pub door and you can’t quite grasp anything anymore. The world swirls and sighs, humming, going to and from, and you wander down the street alone, and you are aching, aching for someone to pull you back from this brink, this curb, this edge of the sidewalk that ends all too abruptly. You wait with your hand wide at your side, but the fingers never feel a thing between them"just the cold rush of air and sweat droplets. This is pain. Silence is the cruelest form of torture.

You wait for something to really come, for people to appear and drag you up from this violent undulating sea, but no one comes. No boat with sails flapping and a familiar face aboard grinning down at you like a blissful and radiant sun: just black water, washing over your head like some terrible baptism, some ritual you don’t want to be a part of. You feel your throat close up and you wonder in this silent death how your mouth could be so dry with all this water around you. But then you realize: this water is simple agony, freezing and numbing, quieting only because of the death it brings like some vile stench or bitter flavor. There is no value to it other than it’s use as a weapon. And as the black water rushes over you, you feel your lungs fill with the briny water, hugging your organs that way that you were never hugged, caressing them as if they were old friends"lovers"in that way you never did. Briefly, you wonder why this is the fate you are cursed with. Then, suddenly, a light flashes behind your eyes and you remember: you gave this ‘gift’ of silence once, in a moment of unreply. This is your exchange. You start breathing the water, realizing this death is better than the truth. You deserve this, but you don’t want the chance to say it allowed, so you drink the water like it is wine and accept the ritual.Give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespassing, as we forgive those who trespass against us

More water, and soon you wonder whether it is sea water or blood in your mouth, but you swallow it down

Lead us not into temptation

I want to live, I do, I think as the water singes my liver and burns me inside out. But I am not worthy, anymore. Silence is the gift that keeps on giving, and I know the only way to decline is death. And so I choose this, wrapping hands around my throat and locking knees and trying, trying to be heavy as to sink. The darkness at the bottom of the ocean is where I belong, this ocean of agony.

And deliver us from evil,

Silence is the ultimate torture and death is the ultimate freedom and it is the one time where silence is recognized in it’s true form as not a gift but a curse and a crucifix and a blaspheme and this is where I see myself as I rise up above the storming water because I am dead and God is dead and nothing exists anymore because of this forsaking silence and all of it’s endless, deafening roar.

Amen.