Keep Listening

If the walls had ears, should they only listen for a day, they would hear insanity, if they listened a while longer, they may begin to see the shape of things.

A single day gives only a smattering of words. Partial sentences here and there, snippets of dialogue delivered in a single voice. The twitching, hushed murmurs of a mad woman set a sea in her own head. Questions to an empty room; answers given without prompting. It’s never a dry recital. The inflections expose real emotion, revealing the imaginary events were felt as honestly as real ones. An unfortunate state of affairs, but living elsewise has never been an option.

A more patient wall would start to see the negative space of all this talk. The shape of the words missing, creating a fuller picture. The image conjured is no longer of one tormented by thoughts not of their own, but of a lone child playing pretend. No friends to add to the scenario, not even a stuff animal surrogate to play a role. Still a sign of illness, but no longer akin to the schizophrenic, but rather being saddled with the emotional depth of a child, one that never quite fit in leaving them abandoned to inventing their own companionship. While most children shed their fantasies and practice lives, doing so was never an option. It fills the hours with giddy surprise, depth of emotion so great from these fictions it could elicit laughter and tears in equal measure, and creates entertainments in the silent and desperate moments of life. It’s debatable if development was truly retarded. The past was not held onto with claws and ferer. It just continues to be a part of the one’s psyche, while the similar fell from everyone else's.

A dedicated wall would be the one that would wait for all the words to crystalize in their owners head. It would be rewarded with the sharp sounds of a keyboard clicking.