The October Music, Stanza 2 - Day 1

It Will Come Back

It’s stopped. For now. The noise. The relentless, pounding, drilling, endless noise. It’s stopped. It’s been replaced by a silence that feels the opposite of peaceful. I don’t know what I did to offend it, but this is the first moment that I have not been drowning in chaotic, constant sound.

I don’t know what it is, either. I don’t know why or how or what or any of those questions journalists like me are trained to ask. I have no context, no background information. No insight. Maybe if I had been able to sleep, my mind would be clear, but I haven’t so it’s not.

There’s not even a way to describe the sound. It’s not piercing, tearing my eardrums to bits. It’s not deep and rumbling to the point that it hurts my bones. It’s not so loud that my teeth clench to shattering in my mouth. It is just consistent. Constant. A thrum, maybe. A thump? Just noise. Unceasing noise.

I haven’t been able to rest in days. Every time I have tried, the sound has rousted me from my bed. Coffee doesn’t work to keep me awake anymore. I’ve even tried other stimulants, some legal and some not, to give me energy to attack my day. Something, anything, to keep me moving. Something other than the sheer stubbornness my job requires. None of it works.

There have been moments before when the sound has stopped. Not many, but some. Moments of brief, blissful quiet. Even those are a cruelty, though. In those seconds and minutes, I hear everything in the world around me. The cries from the baby next door, neglected and ignored by its junkie mother. The desperate grunts and moans from the couple in the throes of relationship death across the hall. The hacking, drooling old man below me as he shuffles away the last precious days of his life in solo desperation. I hear the sounds of the world and I hate them. I hate all of them.

Then the sound starts back up and, for just a second, I feel relief. The world around me is drowned out. But then it sinks in that I am once again in this auditory cage and I ache to hear the humanity again. Either way, either result…it all tears my heart to bits.

This silence now feels different. Purposeful. As if I…wait. Across the hall, I hear something smashing. Something ceramic. Yelling, incoherent and heart-broken. I can’t make it out. Something ugly in the sound. It increases. Why is the noise not coming back? Why am I hearing this? A gunshot. Two. Three. Thump thump. Somethings hitting the floor. Where is the noise? I can’t hear this. I shouldn’t hear this.

Where is the noise? Where is the sound that muffles the world from me? I don’t want it back. I want it back. I don’t know how to function. I don’t know how to be. Someone is dead and I just need the noise.

            Please.
​
            Please.