Silence

One Made Of Lacking Things

I don’t remember the day the world ended. But I do remember the day I noticed.

That photo was it, but I did not know what it meant until I sat in my darkened bathroom, staring at the newly developed film. The street was neither empty, nor abandoned. It was dead. The colors of the flowers wrapped in that red ribbon caught my eye, and as I crouched to take that photo, I could hear only the lonely silence of a graveyard after dark.

Looking down at those discarded blossoms, I thought of nothing. Noticed nothing except the artistic potential of the scene. Gazing at that art, however, brought rushing to my mind the total silence of absent things. Once upon a time, my city was a loud, vibrant place. Like most cities, it smelled awful, was overcrowded, and cars had taken over. We were an inconvenience getting in the way of our four wheeled overlords. Not so anymore.

Despite their lingering presence in the background, they were nothing more than ghosts. Banquo waiting at the corners of perception, reminding us of all that we lost.

Funny, isn’t it? The things we least enjoy are also least missed when gone. Least noticed in absence. I know how it felt, walking out my door and noticing the myriad things to be dissatisfied with. But as with the world’s slow decay, I did not notice it until that photo of the flowers. Until I looked again at something mundane made unique by my world’s slow entropic decay.

Suddenly, my mind filled with the missing, the holes left behind, the crushing silence of absent things. I once read a book, I have forgotten the name of the book, where the author wrote about such a silence. That silence seemed miraculous, indeed, or so it looked like

in my mind’s eye. One made of things which could have been, but which were not.

Cut off in that isolated chamber, cut off in that empty structure, realization emerged. It had been building up, stretching, existing in the obscure a recesses of my soul. The knowledge of what did not exist. 

I have forgotten what they call it when waiting for the photos to set. The word to describe when exposure to light would no longer ruin them, I sat back on my heels and listened. Apart from the faint buzz of electricity, the heartbeat of the building there was nothing. A void as empty as space, a darkness as frightening as a closet door when you are a child and there is a storm outside.

When was the last time I had engaged with a neighbour in a conversation?  Writing has always been a lonely occupation, my pastimes being rather solitary. It was the life I wanted to live, held captive by the pleasures of the city, repelled by the bodies pushing against each other. But where had that humanity gone? undefined I knew even in my marrow what had happened.

Sometimes I would ponder how they might feel knowing that their living was still out there. Standing around as if waiting for the couple to come back

from their honeymoon. But they would never come home. Casually, I placed the cigarette between my lips and waited. Of course, smoking indoors was out of the question. But when was the last time I had crossed path with my

building super? When was the last time they even paid for rent?

Without even thinking twice, I pressed the button and sank back into the realm of the endless, soundless darkness. If only I could switch off that little red light which would never harm my precious pictures and sit in the dark until I die who would care?

My family has vanished, and the sting of their disappearance had faded years ago. It is quite ironic that I do not consider their departure as the day the world came to an end. But there had been so much going on, so many other facts onto which I could latch. I could not consider the collapse of my life as the end of everything because there was no reason to do so. This is as the end of time. For days and nights had come and gone. Subconsciously, my hand reached into my pocket to pull out the small silver-plated lighter that I flicked to strike flint against steel.

Placing the lighter’s flame to the tip of the cigarette, I was hardly aware whether I was puffing on it or not. The mind was overcrowded with gaps and things that were missing. Oh yes, children used to run wild in the streets, I remember that well. Not thieves and other miscreants aiming at causing havoc, but children enjoying their boisterous games with others of their age. But I was glad for them, I believe. Well, of course, I am glad to see them now despite the fact they’ve been gone for quite sometime. Noting this with pleasure I thought the streets of the city are meant for human being to live their lives. But even the joyful shouts and laughter which they used to emit were also a thing of the past now. Had it truly been gleeful? And there had been an edge to it. A hint of crazed delirium that cut through their glee, just the same as it had done for me That feeling deep inside that something was not right, something was wrong.

At times, I have questioned if it is not the world that has ceased to exist, but me as well. The slow process of turning into a fossil of myself, getting

trapped into such routines that were no longer significant. Being alive in a world that would not comfort me with the thought that I was not the only one.

It was on that day that I began to realize. On that day I understood that the world had ceased to exist.

The day I processed that film and saw the flowers in the red ribbon. Falling or tossed, misplaced or left behind, happiness or sorrow. It was proof of a human existence in the state of change, proof of something alive and developing. Proof of a humanity that I could possibly have experienced had I been there one hour, one minute earlier. But seeing them, lying on the pavement that appeared new despite being old due to lack of rolling wheels only made me realize that I am indeed alone in the end.

My knees were drawn up to my chest the cigarette was cold. Entirely solitary confined in the carcass of a city that was once a home and jail to millions of people. For me that was the day the world died. undefined The day when I sensed that I was turning into an island, which should not happen to any person. She did not even seem to care that she was crying as she stared intensely at that one picture. A visual of the life that could have been just a few inches away. Sitting in the dead silence of a world that I had out lived.