A Letter from the Quiet

Dear Silence,

Why are you always the last thing I want to sit with? The last thing I want knocking at my door, holding me in the emptiness of a room I've been in for too long?

I avoid you. Not for the reasons you probably suspect, but for the reasons I've created in my mind. But whenever I do sit with you, you tell me things. You give me things I know I long for and miss, even when they aren't things I want to hear, feel, or remember. The thoughts, the memories, the sound of my heartbeat.

After a while, it becomes calming. Five minutes of you after being drenched in the world feels too long. But I've sat with you for ten days straight before, and you released things in me I didn't know I held — dreams, ideas, longings left in the back of my mind that I promised to come back to but never did. When it gets quiet, they surface.

I try to fool myself and think I can push past you, but every time I do, everything just continues to get louder — especially when I'm begging for life to slow down just a little bit.

I'll work on spending more time with you. I think we both need it. Even if the dogs disagree.