Silence of Solitude

There are three things that happen at once. The loneliest whale on Earth cries out for an answer, a woman down the street tells her partner she loves them only after the door closes, and I find myself alone in the middle of a crowd. These three things happen cohesively and unceasingly, moving together through the confines of time.

The woman’s words float above the unsuspecting heads around me, drifting forward at a leisure pace. I pause and watch them approach, the flow of people parting like waves to make space for me. The words are the color of sorrow and desire, the tone of a lonely ocean song.

I watch them and sigh, dreading their approach. Dreading the feel of them. The lost words whispered in secret.

Her voice reaches me and with a reluctant finger, I stretch out to touch them. Beside me, a man sneers and laughs but I don’t blame him. He cannot see what I am grasping, cannot hear the solitary cry of words spoken into silence. Words that people don’t realize survive. That drift aimlessly in search for someone to hear them.

They exist around us and between us, waiting until they are not alone. I find them everywhere, broken and desolate and lonely, and everywhere they crawl towards me in desperation. They limp and run and drift, relieved at finally being seen.

I cradle the woman’s words to my chest and welcome it inside my heart, wondering if there’s anyone to hear my own whispered agony in the silence of solitude.

Taylor Hopper is a full-time nursing student in Michigan and a part-time painter and author. She primarily focuses on fiction pieces centered around topics of mental health, the strange and exciting, and the wild experience of being a human. When she has spare time, she likes to spend it visiting her family farm, reading at the beach, or hiking in the woods. You can find her work in The Rush Magazine and her art account on Instagram @taylor.hopper.art