Silence

“It doesn’t matter if anyone else understands. You do, and that’s all that matters to me.”

The words stir my mind; a mind transfixed on silence. Only the refrigerator’s hum fills the still as I’m thinking…

What would it be like if I were alone, every evening, in an endless string of solitudes? 

Silence, the womb of communion.

Would others think me crazy if they knew I encountered communion in the silence?

Then the words come, as if a rush of wind stirring leaves in an abandoned well, an answer to my unspoken prayers:

“It doesn’t matter if anyone else understands.

You do, and that’s all that matters to me.”

Silence, delightful and yet terrifying. Not enough of it and I knit my brow in consternation, growing cross at slow-moving cars dominating fast lanes. 

Not enough of it and I guffaw stalled shoppers fingering tin cans in body-packed aisles.  Not enough of it and I gasp for breath when people lunge for short lines.

Yet in this instant, silence thickens the air. The heaviness of imagining never hearing my husband turn the key and bumble through the door bears down upon me.

Yes, silence is the gap between eternity and humanity, the void ushering in thoughts not generated by soul, or mind, or heart; thoughts arriving quite unexpectedly. 

At first, seeming somewhat out of sync. Then making all the sense in the world of the world.

In this womb of communion, the whisper comes, unheard with ears but more real than my own prattling voice. “It doesn’t matter if anyone else understands. You do, and that’s all that matters to me.”