Member-only story
Silence of Winter
And the absence of answers
I’m in the doctor’s office, wondering how long till I die. I think fifty years, which seems far too long. The thought is yellow sap on my fingers, and my mind is a dry stick snapped in half. No one knows
when his time will come. We’re fragile, yet we wake with percolating lungs. On the strength of one heart we keep moving, and on the strength of one mind we continue
thinking. Some days a part of me wants to die but the rest of me wants to live. Like a tree growing away from itself. And some parts of me were never here at all. Other parts are Redwoods in morning sun. Many people think
they are poets, and it is very difficult to talk them out of it. They waste time with creosote soaked words, but as taste matures appetite diminishes. Tell me something plainly. Let it stand
on its own. If your words cannot be a tree, don’t type them. The best words are unspoken. Blank canvas, flourishing white space. Everything else is secondary. My silence is
a well. To pull water from my well is a gift. My thoughts are rustling leaves. To shake them loose is to have my attention. My speaking is birds in quiet forest taking flight. This morning I wondered
when I might die. I thought maybe tomorrow. Which seems short. The trees are silent giants asking nothing, leaving their mark without footsteps and without words. It is winter now, and these trees do not change.
To experience winter is to experience silence. The doctor enters the room and closes the door. He holds a sheet of paper in his hand that reads test results. And then. We are alone.
Hey, I’m Roman. I’m working on my debut novel, 20xx, a work in magical realism. I write on Substack.
