The mirror shattered to reveal a forest aching for relevance in this reality; whispering sounds of ancient purity over the reflected light in the sink below, collecting like lightning in a bottle.
I too was pooled there amongst those cutting edges; echoing the world on stage before me. Awaiting the curtains to drop and take a bow; usher the lot of us out to the streets below, where sirens still wailed incessant panic and cars congested like dry autumn leaves while pedestrians walk from a to b, oblivious to the forest in 13 c.
If thunder could only speak through a trumpet, that is the sound.
It is everywhere, abruptly, then slowly not- a passing flood. A confidence of noise that terrifies the insides, sends them scattering in all directions, but bound to you. the fruitless effort makes them-
resentful.
Desperately, I wish I could capture that sound; pin it to this page and share it with you, if only to prove to myself its existence.
When it rises again, I am still broken. A school bus made of rubber out of control too fast to stop forcing itself through too small a gap; the agony of that sound.
All life inside me fades as it does replaced by uneasy stillness.
I can see no reason for it but-
something is wrong.
The scurrying of my insides incites the space I find myself in to salivation.
It could be- the way it feels, the stillness; I am already within the monster’s mouth.
There are no signs for or against this just the absurd quiet between; a caesura in the fear.
The hills outside could be rolling off into a horizon unseen, or the listless valleys of an ancient tongue overgrown; the eater of worlds.
I feel it deeper now, its third report. Like I should know its purpose and it is violently disappointed.
The birth of a maladie underdeveloped. Only trachea and lungs and noise, no head or mouth to shape the air; fumbling out this inelegant discord.
That’s the sound.
I imagine the world is silent, lest whatever ill fate it portents take it too.
Grow Gray With Me 