"The Resounding Silence" & "Broken Mug" by Claudia Wysocky

The Resounding Silence

The silence was resounding—

Stifling as it crept into my every thought.

The silence was all consuming—

Reshaping every crevice of my imagination.

The silence was foreboding—

As the thoughts of my mind seemed to echo off the walls.

I wanted the silence to break,

But it seemed to gain on me, twisting around my heart—

Wrapping its chilled fingers around my throat.

I was powerless to stop it—

But something sounded, a bang, a crash—

Piercing through the shroud of endless silence.

—My heart?

Was I finally falling apart,

At the thought of my own silence?

No—

It was the door.

And with it, came a flood of noise—

Tumbling into the room, overwhelming every thought I had.

A bang, a crash —And smoke.

Was it a fire?

Was I wrong about the silence?

Or had it only been hiding,

waiting for this moment to consume me?

No—

Oh—

My dad’s smoking again.

Broken Mug

It was a cold, clear day in the second week of April.

I remember that it was a Saturday and that I was in the kitchen

making coffee for the two of us.

I remember taking the cup from me and holding it up to the light

to see if it was clean. There was a smear of coffee on the rim,

but the coffee inside was still clear.

I remember how the light shone through the coffee

and made the liquid glow.

I remember how he stood over me then, and how my heart

fluttered like a bird. I froze.

He took the cup from my hand and threw it against the wall.

It shattered into a thousand pieces and I remember watching

as they fell to the floor like rain.

I opened my mouth to tell him that it was his fault,

that he should have known what he was doing, but then I remembered

that it was me who did that to us.

I took the broken pieces of ceramic and put them carefully in the sink

in case there might be some use to them later.

I cleaned the place I had thrown my heart at,

cleaned the place I had thrown my soul at.

I swept up the pieces of my life, as dull and meaningless

as the fragments of ceramic.

I carried them to the garbage and threw them in,

along with the fragments of my body.