the sound of silence

I set in my room, this room, banging away on the keys of my writing machine content to tell the stories of my life to anyone who will listen. When I have finished this task I go into one of the many other rooms and look for my wife only to find her setting in her room banging away on the keys of her writing machine. We do this in silence.

I stand watching her and try to find a way to express myself to her without disrupting her and find myself mired in silence and walk away. Silence is the little killer

I remember times in summer we would walk the night, or drive the day to some unknown place simply to find adventure and fun in our lives. They were the best of days.

I remember in winter we would set in each other’s arms and watch the snow fall in a comfortable silence, as lovers do, simply basking in each other.

I remember setting in silence waiting for her return from whatever adventure she may have found herself upon. The silence building into rage at the thought that I was not fit company for her exploration any longer.

I remember how that rage forced us apart and how I would spend many nights setting on the stoop of my home in silence fuming at the damage that had been done to us and not being man enough to speak my heart.

I remember the silence in my heart growing until there was no sound

Now I set banging away on the keys of my writing machine, saying all the lost words that should have fallen on ears that needed to hear them. I smell the dying of the summer as autumn closes in and the restless stirring of my weary soul reaches out for my favorite attendant only to be answered in silence.

Soon I will close this book and go to bed, to begin another day, in a long line of days that will march until my last day. All will be spent in silence.

The moral, if there is to be a moral, is to push back the silence, fend off the dying of communication. Speak, from the heart, good or ill, but keep that sound of life alive in your homes for there is nothing more pathetic than a house without sound.