She hadn’t known what to expect, but it was not this frenetic silence. Her eyes never strayed from him as he gathered up those things which accumulate over time, those personal things someone brings with them which somehow become your own as “I” morphs into “we.” But all through it he never glanced back. Had they, words might have made space, wedging themselves in. The dreaded silence might have been broken.

I rose first

like most mornings,

navigating space and time

and balancing the fragile tight-rope

of two dimensions.

Caught between

fears and dreams

laying hidden within the creases of her mind,

I rolled my heels

onto my toes

and placed dampened footfalls

that invoked

the envy of a dropped pin.

Dark collided with light,

and I transformed into

a slow and steady hunter

camouflaged by apparitions

made of car lamps and taillights

while stalking my undergarments like prey,

never wavering from the stoic gaze

I held on my sleeping beauty.

It’s in these moments

between her rises and falls

when even my heart stops beating

to match her rhythm

and with patience,

I await for her to release me

so, I can move and breathe

once more.

She always asks

why I never wake her,

and the simple answer is

I want her to remain

in that castle in the sky

for as long as possible,

to live out her dreams

right now

because there’s no promise

of a tomorrow,

and no guarantee

that any of my made-up imaginings

she willingly believes in

will ever come true.

So, sadly today

there will be no kiss

for a slumbering princess

to avoid waking her

from those faraway places

she returns each night to visit,

but there will be a storybook ending

waiting on a hotplate

next to a pile of bacon,

and a pint of syrup.

And only when she beckons

for her bearded nobleman

eagerly awaiting

for her hair to be let down

and his name to be summoned

will it be delivered

because a Prince’s only job in fairytales

is to rescue

and sweep her off her feet,

No matter which realm

she chooses to be.

Moving in Silence

is the kinesthetics

of attention

As with the flow

of Meditation

the monk within

this cloak of skin

says his incantation

expanding ribcage

with nothingness

and releasing

the invisible

nakedness

to the eye

shuffling

his feet across

the platform

of his station

as a voiceless

narrator in

the passage

He nods:

I am

the Silence...

that makes way

08.05.2023

Moving in Silence challenge @TheWolfeDen

Every day I move in silence. I am alone. I see many people living their lives as I walk home. Eating in groups, shopping with friends, holding hands, dad's holding sons, mom's talking with daughters: people connecting all around me. I don't understand this world, but I envy the idea of it. I eat alone in the morning, walk to the bus I take to work, work in a meaningless job that requires little interaction, take the return bus to the last stop, and walk to my small apartment, to eat alone again. My apartment building has other tenants, but the turnover is great, and it seems a tiring and useless act to try to relate to the casual. Most of them that I’ve seen look as fatigued with their own repetitive lives as I feel.

I was abandoned early in life, leaving me without conventional social skills; without proper cheerleaders? supporters? encouragers? that live in that imaginary world I envy. I am left without the necessary drive to seek more. I exist to survive; I survive to exist. I am a stray in a busy society. I blend into the background and go unnoticed.

Every day I move in silence...among you.

They move in silence above us, where the vacuum eats any sound before a single wave can propagate. They're coming. Our leaders know, but they don't know how to tell us. So they inform us in drips and drabs. They want to let us down easy.

First, deny.

Second, rationalize via weather.

Third, humiliate those coming forward.

Fourth, selectively release isolated incident footage.

Fifth, acknowledge, but keep it vague.

Sixth, seed the news broadcasts, preferably right before the human interest story at the end.

Seventh...there is no seventh. They're here, and they're no longer moving in silence.

They are making a lot of noise.

my mother would call it 'walking on eggshells', but I learned from a young age how to go unnoticed, a spectre in my own space and under my father's roof. we had to be devoid of childhood feelings, no giggles from secret languages and notes or shouts of sibling spats or clattering Legos or anything that represented the inconvenience of our emotions.

in my house, there was no survival of the fittest. there was only survival of the quietest, the least inconvenient to exist.

"What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you fucking stupid? You're supposed to be upstairs. Go back up there and so help me God if I hear one SOUND out of you you're going to wish you'd never been born," with a significantly pointed finger at the top of the cherry wood filing cabinet, boasting a stack of files and a belt and the world's largest copy, at least in my eyes, of the Oxford English Dictionary.

moving in silence keeps you alive. it keeps you human, it keeps you inside your body and most importantly it keeps out everything else that invades the only safe space you have - the quiet of your own mind, tucked into the darkest corner of a bedroom just above the study in a 250 year-old house with crooked & creaking floorboards, flipping each page as silently as you possibly can and tiptoeing, even in the middle of the day on a Saturday in the summer, across the floor only if you dared to get another book or to quietly use the bathroom tucked away in the opposite corner of the house. and God forbid that you get a two-inch splinter on your way - socks are a must for moving in silence.

the silence is deafening. but that silence means survival, and safety, and the assurance that, for the moment, at least, everything is okay, even if you dread the moment when that silence breaks like a crack of thunder.

Moving in silence can be interpreted in different ways, depending on how a person takes it into perspective. Some people see moving in silence as climbing a mountain without telling anyone that you're about to go to the top of the world. Others may see it as someone having a secret plan and not telling anyone what their plan is until the results are released.

For me personally, I see moving in silence as shutting the world off in your ears to have peace in your mind in order for your passion to be unbothered.

Moving in silence for me creates many different possibilities to set a goal for yourself, to take a massive step in your life, and to build up your biggest dreams without telling anyone you know about your plans. There may be a variety of reasons why people move in silence. For example, they don't want their plan to be interrupted by a person who has the desire to ruin it for them. For others, they simply just want to have a silenced environment so they could move without the wind blowing onto them.

If there was a reason why I should move in silence, it would be to search for peace. There's a big difference between searching for peace and searching for pleasure, but if we choose to do both at the same time, moving in silence instead makes us want to create peace. If there was a universe where I could do anything, and I mean literally anything by myself, without a figure to stab my plan in the back, I would want to live there. But moving in silence also meant requiring to fight obstacles and challenges in your life on your own. Because if no one knows about your plans, they won't be able to properly support you when you face your mental suffering.

I see moving in silence as a blessing and a curse at the same time, which is why we should have a perfect balance in between. Moving in silence allows us to take an immense step in our life on our own, which also allows us to let go from the suffering we have to endure in the past. If we keep holding onto our past, we won't be able to move on. But moving in silence should also allow us to be open for advice and support whenever we need it.

The prompt asks me the question again: "What does moving in silence mean to you?"

To answer that question, I see moving in silence means searching for hope... alone.

They move around,

Eyes blind to me,

Clash of noises

And thrumming steps.

I slither in the shadows,

Watching as they pass,

My sound consumed

By the cobbles.

Their tumult deafens their eyes,

My quiet opens mine.

He’s not unwelcome, but certainly unexpected.

Stepping behind her, one hand grasps the back of her neck, another wraps her in what’s almost a warm embrace.

She wordlessly gasps, empty except for his plunging need.

He enters her quickly; this is the greeting. His grip is foreplay.

Frantic thrusts stir a single cry while he moves in silence.

Hand shifting from nape to cover her mouth, breath is hot against his palm.

Her knees falter. Thrusting all the while, he slowly lowers her to the harvest gold linoleum floor.

When she’s found, the spotless kitchen has turned a rusty brown.

I like to think of myself as an awkward, little ghost, blending with the background, moving about unnoticed. Moving in silence, yet hyper aware of all that is happening around me, as if the numbness hasn't set in yet and I am a newborn ghost, someone with a youthful soul, someone who has not yet tired of roaming the earth but feels like it's a whole new world just waiting to be explored. As if I hadn't done enough exploring alive. I get to revel in the feeling of being an outsider, looking in, examining each and every person's life, closer than ever, never giving away even a hint of my presence. I feel sneaky, like a child watching something that they've been warned not to, but it's fun in a way because I get to see a whole new side, to people I thought I always knew. But this is a blessing and a curse. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss and I should remember not to indulge my curiosity by following people into their homes because sometimes, curiosity breaks your heart. It leads you to answers you realize you never wanted. You were perfectly content with the version of themselves that people wanted you to see. So I move, from place to place, person to person, hoping I might find someone who's the same as they are behind closed doors. Until the panic sets in, until I go mad with worry that nothing is as it seems, until I feel no more like myself, I am content with moving in silence, examining each and every person's life, closer than ever, never giving away even a hint of my presence.