Flash Fiction
It was difficult to catch her singing, and often I didn’t try. I mustn’t. For I mustn’t be caught listening.
As a rule, I left her alone. Everyone did. But sometimes I let my eyes follow her discreetly along as she shifted through the rooms, an apparition, silent, ghostly, unhappy. Mostly the third. She rarely looked for a quiet place to sing- most of the time she was merely trying to walk off her desolation- but sometimes she was, and it was those sometimes that I had to restrain myself the most. It was difficult, and at times almost impossible, but I knew that she would be utterly and completely broken if she ever caught me in the act of catching her in the act of singing. She would stop singing altogether, maybe she would stop talking altogether. It would be like trampling on the already shattered vase of her heart. It was difficult, and I own how ridiculous it is to emphasise my challenges adjacent to hers- but it was. Often, I gave in and trailed behind her in the gardens or cocked my ears at the door of the deserted garage in the hopes of catching a note or a tune, or even just a simple hum. I seldom did, but sometimes, increasingly rarely, something faint would brush by my ears, a pleasant tingling, the ghost of a vibration, the departing soul of a note, and the moment made me feel piercingly guilt-ridden and simultaneously blessed. For her voice had an indescribable beauty to it. Something whole. something ethereal yet at the same time fiercely human. Her voice answered prayers. Her voice was entropy giving way to complexity. Her voice was the universe having meaning.
But even metaphors do her an injustice. You cannot describe beauty with metaphors; you cannot describe an orange with words. You need an orange to describe an orange, and you need appreciation to perceive beauty.
It’s a shame, though, that the world could have benefited from her voice. Or maybe it would’ve just broken her further while attempting to wrench it from her. At least she still sings, albeit infrequently and insecurely; and while I might not be able to hear it, at least she can, and at least the air molecules can. At least the air molecules are allowed to oscillate back and forth at her perfect pitch; maybe that is their reward for being good, laws-of-physics-abiding air molecules.
That is a happy thought, and as a drowning man, I try to clutch at as many straws of happy thoughts as I can. She’s well past that, though; she won’t even grab my outstretched hands, let alone straws. All I can wish for her, all I can pray for, is that she drops gently and softly down, and that she can plummet into the bedrock with a final song in her lungs.