How lovely. Her long hair curls at the ends with a playfulness that is endearing, and her silken strands fly in the air in a movement that is graceful. Her eyes are bright and her face is flushed; full of fun, full of mischief. The dimple on her right cheek draws the eye; draws affection, draws warmth. From admiring eyes, from knowing eyes, from sad eyes. But my sharp eyes miss nothing as I try to find what the others can’t: A darkness, a bitterness, an unpleasantness. A shadow of her wrong, a betrayal of her fault.
My head pounds from the rush of blood as my body heats from the anger that knots heavily in my gut: Unyielding, inconsolable. My fingers clench and my scratchy nails dig into my palms; my fists shake, my toes squeeze; my teeth grind against each other and I like this fury, and the angry strength in my body like it’s alive. Coiling and snapping with ferocity like a brandishing whip, like flames lighting up the path of petroleum. But the feeling deflates when I feel a hand squeezing my shoulder, when I turn around and see the sorry faces of people I recognize and know and don’t know and might know. Their gaze bears into me, into my anguished heart. They approach me with their downcast faces and wet eyes, and I try to understand their emotions. But I am too suddenly consumed with a terrible feeling of loss, of a very deep sadness. Of a hurt so profound I can’t move from where I stand rooted to the ground:
Tense, afraid, conflicted, heart-broken. They are telling me sorry, I can tell from the way their mouths are moving. I am so sorry, I am so sorry, your loss, this loss, such a loss. All I can do is nod. Once, twice, three times and continue until they turn away, shaking their heads and drying their eyes with one hand on their chest like it’s them that can’t breathe. Like it’s their chest that feel like it’s constricting in on itself. My eyes return back to the picture, back to the smile of the girl who was driving her car that Night— I don’t know which night I don’t want to remember I refuse to remember…
The Screeching of the tires on the pavement and the loud penetrating Honking and the headlights that were too Bright in the darkness and the echoes of the blood-curdling Scream that started from my belly and tore through my chest and ripped its way out of my mouth that continued and Continued and rocked my body and Filled my car and my ears and scorched my throat and ravaged my mind before the… Drifting… Sensation of slowly falling into Silence and blackness… Before the brightness and the sharp pains and tubes and machines and people surrounding me, trying to talk through my scratchy throat and the hurting everywhere and the heavy pressure on my chest and tightness that made it so hard to breathe, still trapped in the Silence… I swallow hard, unable to keep looking at the girl not even alive to know that she’s being missed. That she did irrevocable wrong, that night her life was taken away… That night she took away…
The Sound
All the sounds
All my sound…

All I hear now is the sound
Of Silence