desert drowning

There is a shadow inside silence that is as wet and heavy as dark water. In the middle of a crowded casino hallway I felt the edge of it breaking over me. 

You are totally, utterly alone, you know that don't you? 

It was a hard thought to argue with because I was alone.

Standing for lack of direction or place, stupidly holding a phone with no one to call. BC back at home, us barely on speaking terms.

 Beach off with friends. Wendi dead. 

Me alone.

Silence starts long before the talking stops.

 It is soft and it spreads out wide. Diving deep head first into night waters. Breaking the smudges of moonlight bobbing on the surface. Heading the wrong way in a blind attempt to reach for an unsure bottom- when really you should be heading up for air. Or better still safe and warm tucked into the arms of a dry sleeping bag.

But have you ever just decided to stop swimming and sink, letting the water become the sky.  When I take Beach to the pool that is all she does. She swims and dives beautifully but all she wants to do is dive to the bottom of the deepest end of the pool and sit. It makes the life guards crazy. She's has BC's lungs and she can stay under for long quiet stretches that feel like church time- each second seeming to last forever.

I have always been susceptible to silence. I surround myself with words and stories. I flood my world with them. Their noise keeping my mind busy. Pacifying the darkness. I drown in silences.

A good deal of our drive home from Las Vegas was done in blackness broken by the beams of headlights. Miles and miles traveled and yet I could tell I was getting nowhere. 

I came home to how it was left. BC's bags and my bags competing for space in the front room. Tripping over dogs and stashes of clean or dirty laundry, some incoming, some outgoing, mine, his: we were just passing in the night. Romantic like giant lit ships sailing in opposite directions through icy winter seas.

When I discovered my computer was gone, in the shop for upgrades and repairs, everything about how,where, and when an unknown, I felt the world fall dangerously quiet. My photos, my writing, my stories, music, conversation, media, communication, email, bills, news, movies, even what I read, was taken. BC said, there is no good time to have it fixed. And he's right, there isn't. But it's hard to believe that there could have been a worse moment than this one to pick. 

And BC left in the morning leaving me here with all my unpacked baggage and nothing else to listen to but the stories I tell myself. There is a shadow inside silence that is as wet and heavy as dark water and think I am in danger of drowning in it.