This poem explores the power of quiet when everything around you was meant to be loud.

I used to like nights for the calm, the quiet.

The daylight was once teeming with the sound of garages opening,

Cars driving past, dust from the street collecting around the open window.

I remember the sound of buses and car horns and people,

But only a little.

Only faintly.

The calm has crept into daylight, now.

With the sun comes an itch to hear something, anything,

Except for the quiet, that was always so characteristic of night.

I once liked the quiet.

Now I want anything but.

The color scheme of the day has changed.

What was once a season teeming with color

Has now become a season of gray and rain,

And the trees that once held the promise of flowers and leaves

Are hidden as I'm walled in by the buildings around me.

Locked.

The music I once listened to for pleasure

Has now become a way of muting the sounds around me,

Or the lack of sounds,

And pretending that, over the blaring chorus,

There is a noise I can't hear, but will,

If I just turned the volume down.

But, I don't turn the volume down.

I live in the false ambiguity,

Knowing that, if I stop,

I'll remember the loneliness and the quiet that I was supposed to only hear at night.

I wake up early just to drink the coffee I used to drink,

And I watch the gray color envelop me

As I strain my ears to hear garages opening,

Cars driving below me,

Kids laughing,

People living.

I look across the balcony and I see a woman alone

at her gray dining room table.

I sit down and imagine that she's waiting for her husband to

open the garage,

walk-in,

hug her.

She stares at the wall,

Eats the last bite,

Takes her plate to the sink,

And sits on the couch.

She gets a call and answers it.

She laughs as a treacherous tear falls down her face.

She doesn't reach to wipe it away.

She thinks, who's going to see it?

So I go back inside,

I open a book,

And I read about the many colors of spring as I hear

Only her voice travel through the open window

And into my home.

She stops talking only when night falls,

And the quiet is back.

I close my eyes and pretend like it only just came.