“Silence Is a Double-Bladed Sword”

Words.

Words dance across pages.

Words sing through the arched ceilings of cathedrals.

Words fall from their lips.

Words are magic. I have always thought so. They spin an enchanted web of illusion, lies, and deception with their sound. They crush hopes and destroy dreams. Yet, they also spark imagination and inspiration. Words are woven to describe a faraway place or a pencil sitting on your desk. Words are torn apart looking for hidden meanings behind their gentle façade. Words are vindictive. Words are misleading. Words are magical and mysterious.

You use words to describe what you are feeling. To describe what you are wearing. To tell what happened to you five minutes or five years ago. You can open your mouth and the words come tumbling out in leaps and bounds, rushes and bursts, trickles and streams, too many and too few, an endless whirl of sounds and words. Of meanings and phrases. Of wit and puns. You can say anything you want to with words.

I cannot.

I write this now, on this page. You stare at it for a minute, lost in the swirling whirlpools of confusion and the frothy seas of puzzlement. You look up, look at me, and wonder what I mean.

I mean what I say. I cannot use the mysterious magic of words as you do, with accents, stresses, diction, and tone. I can only write upon this page, expressing with a wide vocabulary and eloquent phrasing.

Still, you are lost in the ocean of obliviousness, unaware that what I mean is printed right on this white sheet of paper. See it? It’s there, in nice clean legible writing and dark, black ink. No. You cannot see it. So I will say it again.

I cannot speak.

Oh, yes, it hits you this time, like a two ton train hurtling toward you. Oh, yes, you understand now. Oh, that is what I mean. I cannot speak. Oh. This explains everything. You are-

Here I sever your sentence neatly. I cannot speak. This does not mean I cannot communicate, as I am communicating with you now. This does not mean I cannot describe, converse, or respond. I am not mute.

I would be if I had not this paper and pen.

Yes, it happens again. I finish my sentence, a sharp dot to note where it stopped, and hand you the notebook. You read. You look at me. You hand it back. You say to have a nice day.

And you walk away.

See what I mean? Words cast a devious web of deception over their spellbound listeners. If I wanted, I could convince you that rabbits were naturally purple with words.

I sigh and hug my notebook close. Wisps of the red hair that I cannot speak to describe as unruly, a hassle, and frustrating fall in my face and brush the freckles I cannot speak to describe as rust colored, spot-shaped discolorations on the skin caused by sun.

I cannot speak. I’ve never been able too. But I can hear, and I can see out of the grey-green eyes you have not noticed. You have not noticed because they have not been described because I have not spoken about them.

I find myself wishing to tell you about the way I see the world. The world that can speak, and the world, me, that is silent. Since the majority belongs to the other half, I can see from a unique perspective. Sometimes, I feel as if I am the only one who really understands the power of the spoken word.

You wonder how I, who cannot speak, can feel and measure the power of the spoken word. I ask you-who better to sense, to feel, to measure insofar as it can be measured than the one who lacks? The one who can only watch and listen, but never partake.

Silence is a double-bladed sword.

On one side, there is the blade I use for attacking, for defense, for protection. It is my understanding of works and speaking. It is my knowledge of their terrible power. It is also my secret fear of using them.

The other side is the cruel side. The side that back-slashes me whenever I use the other blade. It is my own inability to speak. It is your own doubts of how could I understand speaking when I have never uttered a single sound. It is my inability to articulate my own observations to those who would benefit from them.

You may wonder, as you saunter down the hall, shaking your head at the freakish intensity of the freak you have just spoken to, why I so clearly separate speaking from communicating.

Speaking, I would explain, is not only the words, the actual substance of what you say, but the way you say it. Your posture, the way little wrinkles appear across your nose as you make a face, the tilt of your head all give fuller body to the words. The tone, a rich, deep baritone or a high, reedy squeak, gives a personality to your words. Your lisp, your accent, it all melds together to form a perfect world of meaning.

Writing a comment on a piece of the paper is flat. Two dimensional. I can add all the words to make it as easy to picture as I can, but I still cannot fully express my comment in the way I could with my own voice. You can imagine it, you can make it seem real in your mind, but it is not fully expressed. Nor could I express it by making the facial expressions and spelling with my fingers. You cannot translate speaking.

You would never pause to think of all the subliminal difficulties that are caused by not being able to speak. For instance-voice. You know what your voice is, what it sounds like, what its characteristics and peculiarities are. I do not.

How can one begin to fully express one’s self without knowing fully how one can express one’s self? If I do not know how my own opinions sound, can I really and truly have them? Are they really opinions? Or are they just half formed principles floating aimlessly in my mind?

I do not know. I cannot speak.

Oh, how I wish I could articulate this longing deep inside of me. This longing for someone who understands, even partially. Not to be alone, for just a minute, on this side of the world. I wish I could tell how much I yearn for someone with whom I can communicate. With whom I can speak.

But I cannot speak. Yet, even if I did, I would not know how to say this. However, if I could speak, there would be no need to say it.

So I watch you walk away, another hope destroyed by a few words and the simple action of walking away. I watch from where I stand, my back against the corner in the wall. I watch from where I stand clutching a notebook like it’s the only thing that keeps me on this earth. I watch from where I stand with one black sneaker-ed shoe pressed flat against the wall a foot off the ground and with one knee slightly bent to allow the foot to press against the wall. I watch you walk away.

I watch you walk to your locker. I watch you open it. I watch you take out a thick, full notebook. I heave a sigh and almost drop my gaze.

But I watch you hesitate. I watch you shoot a quick glance in my direction. I watch you look at the notebook like it contains your soul and take a deep breath like you are sucking in all the oxygen in the world to get you through what you are about to do. I watch you turn. I watch you walk up to me. Almost without believing what you are doing, I watch you hold the notebook out to me. It falls open in my hands. Your notebook, filled with words that you created, the stories that you tell, things made by your voice, is in my hands. You speak.

“You cannot speak. Sometimes, neither can I.”

AN: Yeah...this is weird. I was playing around with different POVs and this is what came out...so tell me what you think.