I returned to school feeling restless. I wandered down to the common room after dropping my bags. I found it empty so I watched television, changing channels as I found nothing of interest.
“Hey, Ethan.” A voice said from behind me. I turned to see my friend Erin leaning against the doorframe.
“Oh, hey.”
“You look bored.”
“I am.” I laughed.
“Want to see something cool? Get your coat.” Erin said with a smile.
When we got back, I wrote this.
To Speak
I talk
I ask questions
I talk a lot
I give answers
I talk too much
I reassure
I talk to a lot of people
I encourage
I talk to friends and strangers and family and enemies
I explain
I talk long into the night
I debate
I talk using big words and lots of adjectives
I offer polite amenities because they are expected
I think maybe I’ll die talking
When that day comes
Whether it is a question on my lips
Or a final answer
Or a joke
Is up to God.
If God wanted to be cruel, He will wait until I am in mid-sentence, so another thing will be left unsaid.
For, though I am always talking, I never say very much.
I have trouble saying “I am angry” when I am angry
I have trouble saying “I love you” when I love
I have trouble saying “I am happy” when I am happy
I never say the things that really matter. I don’t know how.
I find it bitter irony that I can talk and talk all day and fill people’s ears with inanities, yet when I truly have something to say, I am left with silence and cannot express a single thought or feeling.
I see strangers everywhere
At the mall
At church
At school
At my home
Strangers who were once friends and family
I want to say
I love you
I miss you
What is happening to us?
Why don’t we talk?
I’m sorry
A second chance…
But I can’t say anything. I just talk.
“Hi, how are you? That’s good. What have you been up to lately? Me? Oh, I’ve been busy. Same old, same old. Working hard, staying out of trouble, you know me.”
But they don’t. They don’t know me at all. We are strangers.
We are strangers
And if I tried to explain it would be like two people in a crowded market
Speaking in unfamiliar languages
Shouting to make themselves heard
As if understanding comes with more volume
And they get angrier and angrier because the other person doesn’t understand
And they never will.
They’re speaking different languages.
I cannot find the right words.
For instance:
We run through new fallen snow and hear our shuffling footsteps
Shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle
Smiling like children, we race
Shuffle shuffle shuffle
We tread in another’s footprints
Shuffle shuffle
To leave as much snow as possible pure and untouched
Shuffle
It was so beautiful
A world blanketed in soft white purity
New and fresh and clean
A blank sheet of paper waiting
Waiting for someone to make a picture or a story
The world seemed like it was starting over
A fresh page.
We climb over a metal railing and run along the side of the Manor
“Come on”
Erin smiles like a school girl and gestures for me to follow
“Over here”
We go around the corner and she leads me to a black metal staircase
Up and up and up
Each step is covered in a thick dusting of snow
Like white icing on dark chocolate cake
We reach the rooftop and look out over the valley and over the trees and over the world
Down and down and down
And it’s all so beautiful
I wonder if God felt this way looking down on Creation, when He said
“IT IS GOOD”
fresh and clean and new and pure
the sky is orange, clouds and snow reflecting streetlights make it so
and the air seems filled with magic and music
Beauty.
I look at Erin, with her auburn curls and black coat and school girl smile,
And I want to say to her how beautiful it is, this world so new and fresh, how it makes me feel like it could be anything I want it to be, or make myself anything I want to be, how maybe I could start afresh with myself, like a blank page or a field of perfect, white untrodden snow. But instead, all I say is “Wow.”
Just “Wow.”
For a moment I knew what God felt and all I can say is “Wow.”
I am in love with a girl who must remain nameless.
I’m not supposed to talk about her
My heart demands it be expressed
So I compromise, I cannot speak so I write
Only I will not write her name, because names have power
Even writing them seems like speaking, and when you speak someone’s name you put them into the room, into the world,
Even if they are far away, their name brings them close to you
And we are not close right now.
I wish I could show her the world from the top of the Manor
I wish I could explain how the page can be fresh
We can make it anything we want it to be
That I can rise above my past and my fear
The same way the stairs raise us above the trees
I wish I could explain “IT IS GOOD”
And how I can be good too
If only I could have a fresh page, a second chance, a new beginning
But right now we’re not speaking.
I am afraid we will never speak again.
So I speak to stars and snow and sky and paper because I cannot speak to anyone else.
But I will.
I will stop talking and start saying things that matter.
Just as soon as I find a way past the wall of silence between my feelings and the world.
I will speak and it will fall, like the trumpets and shouts that knocked over Jericho.
And I will walk into the world and we will be new and pure.
A fresh page.
I finished writing this, remembering in my heart what it was like to praise God.
3 comments
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April 16, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Kitabare
If she is anything like me, Erin totally understood “Wow”. Sometimes that one word says more than an entire sentence.
Another similarity between us. Showing people things they would otherwise never see. I should try to take an picture of the abandoned ferris wheel one of these days. That one is a “Wow”.
April 16, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Katie
um…it’s about time?
April 16, 2008 at 7:52 pm
nomananisland
I think of “wow” as an acronym for “WithOut Words.”
Because, to some extent, Ethan’s mind is a reflection of my own, his Asperger’s obsesses over words and language more than anything else. We think in words, telling ourselves stories about who we are and about our memories. I was in university before I learned some people think in pictures or sounds, and I was astonished because I took it for granted that everyone had the same internal monologue I have.
So, he’s spent months perseverating on his miserable circumstances and feeling isolated, and the only story he had in his head was about how bad things were. It takes this one moment, without words, for him to be still enough to hit restart and find a new way to think.
Kitabare: if you have that ability, than you are a very fortunate person. I’m glad it fits. 🙂