Fiction, Calla Smith

Prayer for Silence

Every night, I wish the day would never come. In the dark air, it was easier to feel the pulse of the concrete under my feet. I longed to feel the beat of too many souls lost over the years to count. It was the only thing loud enough to manage to drown out the one-sided conversations in my head, eating away at me for as long as I could remember. 

In the darkness, I didn’t have to worry about how close I would come to crossing the lines that were engraved on my body and burned into my skin. Boundaries were blurry in the confusion of the shadows that haunted all the places I passed through like a ghost. The bold letters of the signs I passed told me I was beautiful, or that I should let the animal out. Every time, while I was lost in the beauty of the stars and the throbbing music and the sparkling bars, I thought I could even believe them.

Out on the cold, hard dance floor, I knew that there was at least a small chance that I could feel alive, that someone would look into my eyes and see all the parts of me that I tried so hard to hide away. In the candlelight, I could still pass for something mythical, someone worthy of being worshiped if only for an hour or so. I could even fall in love with my own reflection when I could barely make out my features in the mirror. 

In the early hours of the morning, the harsh light in McDonald’s didn’t bother me, even though I knew my eyes were covered in mascara bruises, and the red lipstick, like blood, had smeared out beyond the wrinkles at the sharp corners of my mouth like some kind of grotesque mask. Even as I ate a quick and greasy breakfast, I felt dangerous and impossible, flying above all the people stumbling out of the clubs to sit on the curb and wait for a taxi to take them home.

I never wanted to go home, because every time I slipped into the shower and my sweat swirled down the drain, my armor was lost. I was once again nothing more than a body sliding between cold sheets, my arm brushing against the frozen concrete wall as my eyes closed and the sun rose. I would be jolted awake in the full light of day where I couldn’t hide anymore from the voices, my voice, really, screaming all the things that I would never say aloud.  

Even when I closed my eyes, it wouldn’t stop. I spent my days writing long letters that would never be sent in an effort to push away all the things I ever wanted to tell the people who had passed even briefly through my life. There were so many of them, and some needed letters upon letters before the memory of their presence was washed out of me, and that voice would rest and give way to another stranger I had once known.

I hid from the sun, but it always managed to find me anyway in some forgotten corner of my kitchen. I could only escape once the dusk fell and I could cover the bags under my eyes with makeup and run over the empty city blocks, eager to be anywhere else.

Life went on like this for so long that I thought it would never change. I wasn’t even sure that I ever wanted it to. I didn’t care if it felt like I was living like a criminal. But as the days and nights went by, the voices were stronger and more persistent with all the things that I would never be able to say. The letters on my dining room table, addressed to my family, friends, lovers, or strangers I had passed on the sidewalk, took up more and more space, and even putting the words that echoed in my brain on paper wouldn’t stop the agony. I could feel the folded notes screaming at me in a hundred hungry voices, and I knew I needed them out of my house. One night I slipped a few in my purse without really knowing that I would do with them.

There was an empty space in a forgotten corner of the first bar I slid into, so I taped the scrambled message to no one there, and a moment of calming silence like the light flickering through the breaks in the music came over me. After that, I posted another note on a lamppost and left another on the bench of a bus stop. The city was full of places that needed to be filled with something. By the end of the night, all the letters I had with me were gone out into the world on their own, and I was left alone at the bus stop as the first rays of the sun hit my face for the first time in as long as I could remember I didn’t wince.