False Layout of Hell

Oral presentations are, by far, the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I sit in front of sets of eyes, lips pursed into bored frowns, folded arms. Lights pour down from the ceiling, and I imagine that every flaw of my pale face is highlighted and shadowed like an old map. Three pages of carefully typed, thoroughly contrived, lengthy notes suddenly look as if the rain has found them. I'll read a word here. A word there. Skip over the main points. Lose my place. Forget what I'm talking about. I'm numb but aware of the regret simmering in the back of my mind, ready to sprout like a weed once I've found a clear moment to think. Emily becomes a stranger, someone I thought I'd left behind between those yellow walls of middle school. I'm twelve years old again, uniformed, blinking behind large, round, metal-rimmed glasses, afraid of what's going to happen next.

I tell myself I'll sink into the softness of this negative approach to silence, let it wrap me up the way spiders tie up flies. But that's absurd, a cruel trick of the light. It's a conclusion casting out everything else that matters, like love, the steady movement of walking down an isle smelling of books, embraces, watching waves roll in, or clouds. Earlier today a plane crashed into some one's home. People died. One man said that all of a sudden, there was a huge bang... and the whole sky lit up orange. Imagine all those tears.

Life's about clinging to what we have, scooping up more, and spreading the good seeds over everything else. It's about that first brilliant day of sun, and the snow melting off rooftops and tree branches. When someone looks at me, holds onto me with their eyes, I realize that we're both still here, still drenched in life. It's in silence that I find these things. Why should I let it go?