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All I hear is silence.
Yet, silence cannot be heard.
My ears lift and twitch.
With a burning fever, I want to know.
But silence is all I hear.
I scratch through the unknown, the thickness of the great abyss stuffed underneath my fingernails. The digging is endless. And I know it. Still, I cannot stop myself.
I am always met with silence.
There are glimpses of light...it sounds so cliche’. I cease my excavation to reside in peace but it only lasts a moment.
My tools call to me, my fingers ache - they want to dig.
I dig until I’m raw. I lift rocks until I’m broken. I throw dirt until I’m screaming with panic inside.
Silence.
It’s maddening as I demand to know and they do not speak. THEY. Is my laborious digging part of the plan? Or is learning to stop the plan?
Endless, fucking silence.
Billions of questions.
Remarkable silence.
I am shielded from my own plan, suffering in a state of dark vision. What am I doing to myself? Is any of this right? What disappointment to look down at my soil packed fingernails and nothing to show for it.
Empty silence fills my bones.
I want to rest. Should I stop digging? What a useless, pathetic effort I’ve put in. For years upon years...over and over...the same damn thing, thinking it will be different but it never is. Thinking I’ll find answers when the echo reverberates loudly off the empty chamber walls.
Silence destroys my will to dig. And it angers me just the same.
Shall I give up? Shall I stop? Shall I clean my hands, brush off the dirt, and look around?
Maybe the silence has the answers.
Maybe we’ll make friends.
- April Ann Roy