The House of Words and Silence

We lived in a house where the words we would never say collected in certain areas, a compartmentalisation of sorts. Sometimes I think it was a need to find a place, a meaning, an answer to explain our lives. We lived in a conversation of heartbeats- the pulsing of words falling from our mouths, to fall and collect silently in carpets and corners and walls. Words laden with meaning, instead of being spoken would drift and fall to collect on surfaces and spaces of our house until the rooms we lived in were filled with words, and even walking from room to room would stir up whole weeks of dialogue that without our movement, would go unsaid.

We built ourselves into the hill there, facing south to track the passage of the sun across the sky, wondering if the sky was full of the same words, and whether each night when the moon left its traces, it also left words for the sun to collect in the day. We wondered whether each planet and body in the sky was silently collecting all their own words, as if words could replace love.

Our house was divided into two parts, the north and the south. The way we lived meant the north part of our house was on the lowest level, and the south raised above. Words like ‘cold’, like ‘autumn’ and the question ‘stay’ fell downwards, sticking themselves to the walls and floor and the ceiling of the north. In summer, the words would keep us cold, cold sticking to our skin so even a shower in passion (in the upstairs bathroom) could barely wash away all the traces. Yet still, cold remained, shivering in the corner of words to describe silence, prefixes and words that froze behind clenched teeth to clatter to the ground. Around cold, the walls were papered with empty questions, ‘how was your day’ above ‘well’, ‘thank you’, ‘fine’, and ‘nothing’. Nothing filled up more space than any other word in the north, nothing lay between cracks in the wall, underneath the carpet, it would settle under our fingernails and in our ears.

Syntax carpeted the stairs yet still, like a subconscious sequence of uncontrollable events, we would crawl on hands and knees over all the leftover nouns, the things that found no place, not for lack of meaning, but lack of home, like ‘kitchen’, ‘window’ and ‘door’. Syntax would bring us in our own way upwards, where the south burned with all the fires of atomical reaction. Conjunctions were war; the contrasting words like acid and alkaline, instead of equalising would burn with their proximity, leaving scorch marks on hands and thighs and curtains.

Things were never where you would expect to find them. ‘Goodbye’ was at the deepest point of the house, melting away all the ‘hello’s until the time would come where there was none left to give. ‘Visceral’ hung over our doorway like a welcome sign; our skin was coated in distance. ‘Pain’ hovered below ‘remedy’ near the couch, and when we stirred from our seating, the two would mix so that one could never really be sure which was which. ‘Loss’ and ‘gain’ made themselves sheets on our bed, so each night we would lie between the two, giving and losing even in the actions of our lungs as they gave and lost to keep us alive.

‘Wear’ stuck to doorhandles, as each would wear the hands that held them, but even as they held it, ‘wear’ would become ‘worn’, the skin of distance changing the letters and vowels, turning present to past in the simple act of contact.

The floor of the north was covered in ‘salt’ and ‘snow’, the south in ‘ocean’. Sometimes a half would become too full of words and the brine and spray of north or south would mix, polarising our world with the turn of hands on the clock, stirring and mixing to make the loudest noise of all: a cacophony of words both said and unsaid.

But with all the words that lived on in our house, we ourselves lived in silence. Each morning we would awake in a tangle of loss and gain, gain dividing skin so loss is all we felt. Tiptoeing around ‘love’, which sat in the middle of our room like an ancient monument, we would take turns to shower in ‘passion’, boiling it out of our morning coffee, cooking our bread to try toast out all the ‘alone’.

‘Routine’ hovered like a cloying miasma in the air, each steadfast movement of our chests brought it closer to our hearts, until the day would come when the beats slowed a little too much, and beating would stop.

I remember the morning it stopped for me. Living with a heart that no longer functions is a very peculiar sensation. It was almost as if I was under anaesthesia, nothing felt like anything anymore. I ran into love, knocking it to the floor as I untangled myself from sheets made of non-existence. I shared a shower with you and left feeling dryer than before. I drank tepid coffee and stared out of the windows, absent of feeling, knowing no relief, no fear, not even the icy fingers of ‘nothing’. You left for work, walking though the temporal and visceral and I began the routine of tidying up our conversations. From room to room I became stained with colours, passion, fire- but never felt a thing. The ache that once crept into my chest when straightening up ‘I’m not happy with this’ was no longer there. I felt neither cold not heat, stumbling though the icy tundra of the north, the thick heat of the south without feeling a thing. In the deepest part of the house, I found our goodbyes. Out of habit, I looked in the drawers where we kept a safety stash of hellos, but nothing seemed to have crept in, wearing away at the letters, goodbye knocking off their edges until all that was left was a few o’s and a hell.

That was enough. I picked up the heaviest ‘goodbye’ and found a curtain of ‘permanent’. I hung these at the front door, ripping down the visceral, drying my face with it and wishing that this would feel like something, anything but nothing. My tears held no reward, so I turned to close the heavy door of welcome, the distance of my skin breaking apart ‘wear’ and ‘worn’  until only a ruin remained. I slid the key of ‘I’m sorry’ underneath the mat which had no name, and left. For years after, I felt nothing more than nothing, less than the space between heavens, enough to make me blind and alone. I stumbled over the great monuments of this world, the same way I stumbled over love, until one summer, I felt a sting. A sting was enough, it had no name but the reward of pain was enough to uncloud my eyes. Bit by bit, I began to seek pain, the only feeling strong enough to unblock my senses. I began to hear the screeching tires of the city I had never known, the thudding of music from the neighbours flat, the sensation of cold fingers. With the use of my fingers, I began to write. I knew not of paper, so I engraved the only surface I knew, my skin, and the deeper the ink sunk, the more I found I missed you.

I wanted to write you a letter of all the things I never said. I wanted to coat my skin with ‘I love you’, with ‘I’ll stay’ and with the words I still can’t bring myself to whisper. I wanted you beside me as I dredges up the mires of my stomach, pulling the petrification of conversation and sentiment out and upwards, to burn in the fireplace of ‘I’m sorry’. I wanted to show you my palms, coated with layer upon layer of ink, the words that I wanted to say to you, but was too afraid. I wanted to do so much, but I was too afraid. So I carved them into myself, un-bottling words and sentences, growing rings of skin like a tree. Cut me open, I wish I could say to you, cut me open and see the ink rings of where you’ve been. Of all the words I couldn’t say, I hoped I could touch you, so you would feel them where my skin found yours. I hoped that my black hands would be enough, that you would know by the tapping of index and thumb that I love you, the rubbing of my pinky that dinner is growing cold, the pressure of my palm against your back that I felt whole around you. 

I wanted to write you a letter out of myself, but instead, I was a burning book. I burned, lying open with my heart and lungs facing upwards so all the prefixes, conjunctions and vowels could fly outwards, sticking themselves onto the walls, leaving a negative imprint of my shadow on the room around me, a space my silence made me. And instead of finding you, of giving you myself, wrapped in the envelope of skin, an invitation for you to unwrap me, I became nothing more than ashes, ashes to float in the wind, seeking out where I left you, breaking though the windows of ‘remember’ to rest in your lungs, the only place I knew home.