It is odd. In the loud, one cannot hear voices. Attempts to differentiate distinctions are disturbed by the overbearing clamor of sounds. Yet— in the quiet, arguably, one hears not anything, because it is as such. Simply that. The quiet. The loud and the quiet, particular opposing forces, are not quite the same. But still. They are not so different, these days.

In the quiet, I am silenced. I quiver and wish to be under the dark. In terms of thematic journaling, the in shade is where I breathe best. If I could, I would demonstrate as such. Like writing with your eyes closed, feather and ink spilling all over your fingertips. This era is not memorable, anymore. Not me, not like this.

To breathe, in the quiet, in the loud, in the dark. I said. If only. In truth, I can scarcely breathe at any moments or hours, but the dusk with its gaping shadow is the cause of most suffocation. As though undead, it creeps over me and settles, an umbrella of lung-shearing amplification. As a fiend, it comes at me, pulling from my insides until I feel an upward movement; this is often the moment before your heart falls limp.

In these pulsating moments, I fear for my last. I am having my last breath drawn from me from this demon that lives within, casually leafing through my novels of fantasy and nonchalantly consuming my every last piece of butter-soaked homemade banana bread. It’s ridiculous. I barely made enough for one of us. We sit in the loud, in the quiet, together, as though family until so casually it clambers over to me and in one wheezing-dust soaked shot, grabs at my lungs. You can almost hear the crushing and the faint sound of my skin reaching a pleasant shade of alice or perhaps azure blue—it’s often a debatable shade.

You know that feeling, when you’re in the loud, and no one can hear you and you are up to a whisper you’re so voluble, and it’s so loud you’re in the quiet now; (and in the quiet it’s deafening, it’s riotous, it’s a raucous) Search for it. Yes that feeling, that sense of urgency, of having everything you know taken away from you, in one quick swift, where you realize you never had a preference or were even allowed on. Let it fume in you. Bask in it. That is me, here, right now, struggling to find air with the bearing’s of this hour hovering over me, eating dinner with me, taking melancholy walks under celestial skies with me.

Imagine holding your breath for countless hours like you were a recovering smoker with bronchitis, blood sticking the back of your palms as you cough up your dignity. Imagine your lungs expanding inwards on random, spitting out colloquial phrases at you about how you should be normal. Imagine environmental changes cutting off your circulation and seeping into your veins, drugging at you like at the end of an addiction. Imagine being robbed at gunpoint with a glock under your chin and someone’s hand in your wallet. Imagine the life being sucked out of your from a vacuous entity, an attempt to harvest your organs in exchange for a little air. Imagine. But worse. Every day. It’s unbearable. I could not even properly explain if I tried.

I cannot vanquish it, no matter how hard I try. I am constantly left with this paradoxical pulse, breathing into tubes and vacillating pressure in my poetry ingesting verbal backwash inflowing airways. I cannot remember a time when I made sense, or, most accurately, when I could properly exhale.

It is odd. In the loud, one cannot hear voices. In the quiet, one hears not anything, because it is as such. In the loud, no one can hear me. In the quiet, I am silenced. My fear now, is that at once, in the norm, I will be ultimately silenced for good, by the vulgar ill resting within me. I am running out of banana bread.