Nobody Sings Along
Usually the electronic buzzing from all of the machinery in her room would saw away at the remnants of her sanity, but tonight she welcomed it. The darkness was her friend, and the buzzing made her feel less alone. It cocooned her in an orchestra of artificial voices, friends. Tonight she sat silent and listened to what they had to say. She was used to that part, having listened voicelessly to others all her life. It was better than trying to sift through her own cacophany of thoughts as she so often did on nights like this. They gave her something else to focus on.
Sigh.
The bead groaned and protested as she rolled off the edge and landed nimbly on her feet. Her toes curled instinctively into the carpet as the sensation of rough fibers sent a flicker up her spine. She shuddered gleefully and shuffled her feet back and forth to recapture the feeling over and over. An uneven square of silver in the pitch black drew her near the window. The moon. A blessing and curse. It was so beautiful and inviting, but with it came the dimming of her stars.
Her lips twitched as she gazed. Maybe if she stared long enough it would go away. She sang a silent song to the sun, wishing for him to come reclaim his mirror, and for the stars to come reclaim her. This planet exhausted her. She dreamt of floating up there with those tiny dots, being wished on by other dreamers and never having to worry about what all of this meant.
Sigh.
The darkness grew louder than the machines, and she crawled back into bed, wiping a dot of imaginary snot from the corner of her nose. Maybe tongiht she could just float there, and the sun would take back the moon, and she could shine. A tiny dot floating in this vast, noisy darkness.
There is something there, in the presence of another person. When I say the word presence, I mean it literally, when they are fully present to this moment, now. It isn't behind the eyes as attributed to old cliches, or in the way they hold their mouth, or in the tone of their voice. It's deeper. I can't quite see it or hear it, but I can feel it hiding somewhere in the absence, in the pauses that they take. The important parts that make us unique are not in our words or thoughts or quirks, these are all filler. We are the silence, the ghost that fills the space where we have been. That's why it's so easy for memories of lost loved ones to strike us so deeply, because they live in that space of awareness. We are none of this, and we are so much more, living contradictions. It's so much simpler than we try to make it.
