Sunday, February 9, 2014

The Adjustments of Silence

It is quiet here, in this space with hard wood floors and naked walls. In the in-between of shuffling from room to room humming to myself and triple, nay, quadruple checking door locks and dead bolts before I retire to the evening - it is quiet. On chance that one would look into a window, they would find a girl carrying around her cellular device with music turned to the loudest decibel.

All the same, it is quiet here.

And those shades that we decided on for their inexpensive qualities - they fell last Thursday morning - or perhaps it was in the midst of the night; perhaps right as the moon kissed the sun goodnight and shone brightly in all his fame and glory, my front window  shade fell down and I did not hear its crash because I was listening to something to aid falling asleep. It is quiet here.
So there lay the shade that next morning - baring the bare living room for all who wanted to see, to see, and I panicked. These windows, they're tall and old and creaky and just the sort of look I like in my windows - but they are tall. And I, I am not - and I panicked. The sense I have acquired over the last year of my independence and my life and the beauty that may unfold if I merely allow it flew, like a lonesome, caged bird, right out the window that was now baring my living room innards and I made myself comfortable in a pool of pity.

It is quiet here, as I fold memories into picture frames and put them on display, as if to remind myself in the quiet, quiet, quiet, that I am not alone, I am loved and I am a friend and a daughter and a sister - it is quiet here, but I light a candle and breathe its vapor and I -- breathe.

I burnt my first batch of cookies, ever, in this foreign oven in my foreign kitchen with the teal tile that makes my heart heat up - and it was quiet here - even with the wailing smoke alarm and my stupid, embarrassed chuckle at what I may look like swinging a cookie pan around to air out the smoky remnants of those cookies; cookies I probably didn't even need to bake in the first place. The wailing and coughing and chuckling, but I promise - it is quiet here.

Even now, Claire de Lune plays in the background and the heat of a candle flame flickers as my hot chocolate cools and the tap-tap-tapping of a keyboard shows mastery of typing and it is quiet here - I am here, in this quiet, and I'm thinking and knowing and wondering so many a thing; how long has my humming been so off key? might my neighbors hear when I sing in the shower like  I wish I was Adele? is it as quiet across this street and down this corner and just next door as it is here?

It is quiet here . . .

It is quiet here and I am here and these spaces will speak the volumes that are missing.

It is quiet here. But here I am.

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