I’m playing a game with Danielle Donders and Christine Hennbury. Danielle takes a picture and sends it round and Christine writes a short story about it. They invited others to play with them and of course I joined in! Go check it out at Danielle’s blog and join us :) This is what I wrote this week.
You know how, when you stop and listen, you hear all sorts of noises your brain ignored before? I’ve been hearing these noises all my life. So much noise. The cars on the street. The washing machine. The fridge. The rain on the skylight. The trains on the track. People talking. Children crying. And I look for quiet whenever I can. I spend a lot of time in libraries.
Take, for example, this morning. The kids were talking over each other while I was trying to wash the dishes and talk with my partner about our evening plans. And the water was running, and the dishes were clanking, and the rain was pattering. And then I could hear it. The snapping. I wished with all my heart for silence. I didn’t click my heels or anything, but I did blink. And now I’m in a deserted forest. There are no animals. At least none that I can hear. Even the leaves deserted the trees, and they stand bare and silent. I listen to the silence and breath it in. In front of me, there’s a stairway leading to a gate. The gate does not connect to a fence. It stands there on top of the stairway, like a guard. Perhaps a guardian. I breath in the silence again and wonder where did everybody go.