Sound

Silence is not an option.

When I was young, only my parents talked at the dinner table. The adage “children should be seen and not heard” still plagues my memories. In high school, Catholic nuns demanded I sit quietly and submit to indoctrination. Then, for nearly three decades, my husband never cared to hear about my dreams. “You bore me,” he’d flippantly retort.

Now separated and free, fifty-three years of stories flow when I write. They run like I did in college when I pounded the macadam for hours with teammates to peel away the silent hatred that I bore during my youth. Stories of my sisters and friends today skip across the pages of my journals and resound in holiday cards. Anecdotes of couples din across the piano keyboard as I play and sip vodka while patrons’ sweaty bodies sway in seedy watering holes.

Words, first spoken and later written, bare my newly-awakened voice. They chronicle the extinguished candles of dinner tables, harsh fluorescent lights of classrooms, and darkened madness of the bedroom. Prose and poetry illuminate my nights, so my tragedies turn into comedies when I write. My comedies speak my truth, and I now laugh aloud.