SPEECH AND SILENCE

SPEECH AND SILENCE – By Zainab Nurani

“I don’t know if it counts as courage, to keep the darkness within me and carry it around all day long, just as it counts as courage to put your heart out on a paper and care a hoot about the consequences.”

Silence is always golden. It is worth more than you can fathom. Silence speaks volumes, but it doesn’t simultaneously. Silence is a strange thing indeed. So many times in my life I have been made to regret the power of speech, hate it, detest it. And here we are again.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m getting softer with age. When I was younger I’d put up with worse but walk through it like it was the easiest task on the planet. Lately, simple words crumble me more.

Back in the day I’d write what I felt without remorse or fear or shame. I’d call the spade out on paper and leave the darkness in the ink. Then, I’d be left with light and love and peace to share, enough to help me put up with glares and words like knives. These days, I’m scared of writing what I feel. I fear the bitter consequences awaiting at the end of the line. I fear someone would infiltrate my writing and see my blood splattered across the page. I fear that what I say would one day come back and bite me in the butt. I don’t know if it counts as courage, to keep the darkness within me and carry it around all day long, just as it counts as courage to put your heart out on a paper and care a hoot about the consequences.

Back then, I thought I was justified to feel the way I did. Today, I am embarrassed and ashamed of what I feel. I detest myself for the way I feel. It is as if it is wrong to feel the way I do. Life is strange, isn’t it?

The very thing that one day used to give me unlimited release today feels like a limited piece of parchment. Only that which is deemed valuable counts. What if I scribble the words over each other, would there still be consequences? Would anyone be able to decipher the soul speak? Will it count as a release?

Now I know, the more you live, the more you lose a little of yourself. That is why you die, because there is nothing more left.

7.31 p.m
6/6/2020
Zainab Nurani