Radio silence

The sweet spot, the second before everything explodes. The bright lights, the echo of other voices, the rain hitting the glass, messing around, led by the wind. The silence. The heartbeat racing. The taste of something rotten at the back of the tongue, sliding down the throat.

The obvious. What everyone sees. What certain eyes can never see. What certain eyes are blind to, just looking at something else. Always something else. A wound. The blood. The mess. Something that feels like home.

Jazz notes. A hand gripping the hair at the back of a neck. The slow poisoning. The quiet whispers of what cannot be said out loud. Another defeat. Muddy boots. Slow pace. Quick pace. The darkness observing it all. Thousands of lights following the beat. A gleam in someone’s eyes. The truth. A lie.

Walking for days. Crossing back and forth, between the sea and the imagined land. The borders that some observe with hatred, unsure if they ever meant something. Just a line to be crossed. Again and again, dreaming of bullets with names carved into them. My name on a bullet that I had to erase. I scratched it away, but I could still feel it under my fingers, pressed into the metal like a memory. I kept the bullet in my pocket, a prisoner, a secret, and I kissed it every night until the peace arrived. A soldier who would panic at every plane crossing the sky. He didn’t like my name there, for everyone to see. A silly game, where I had to be quiet, hold his hand, and obey. A silly game that I stopped playing when the sun was no longer warm enough — just in time for a last swim.

Radio silence. For years. No word. No letters. No calls. No gripping memories pounding into my chest. And then a day with a barely warm sun. The bright, vivid gaze of fear in his eyes.

I bite back. I hold the blood and spit it out. The rain wakes me. I’m in the middle of the road, in the middle of the sea. I was high up, meters above the ground, holding hands and floating around — and now I’m just breathing through it all. Music is off. Dense fog covers everything. Cold, rainy, muddy. The lights are being turned off. A silly smile. Pebbles guiding the path ahead. The door always half open. The sound of a distant TV, always on. The smell of cigarette smoke. It’s not a nightmare — when it happens every day.