adrianna sanchez-lopez

NEW SILENCE

The storm ruptures my words into inky, monstrous shapes. I don’t trust them.

 I write beneath a nest of baby birds. The nest, built into a hanging flowerpot, whips in the wind. It keeps rhythm against my teenage daughter’s bedroom window. The fledglings cry. I can feel their terror—something I know but can’t articulate.

 My daughter has not spoken to me for two days. A lie. The truth is, I’ve not spoken to her either. Silence displaces us. Avoiding her, I’m an indiscernible part of this storm, clinging to my hope that writing will heal us. How long, tiny birds, will this silence last? It hurts.

 I’m wrestling down pages, trying to flatten a space to interpret this ache in my throat. As the rain starts to fall, my body slumps forward. I yearn to join the birds in their desperate, broken melody.

 A few days ago, my daughter shrieked: “Mom! Come here!” Standing at her bedroom window, she pointed to grey fuzz and tiny beaks. Her window is the only place where we can see the birds. In the early mornings, just as the sun rives through darkness and saturates mountain peaks, they chirp discordantly. They’re awake. They’re hungry. They beckon their mother, irrevocably trusting her return.

 I think about the incomplete stories in my rain-drenched notebook, lingering between conception and existence. I think about the Spanish that still lingers on my tongue—another part of me obscured by the dusky shadows of neglect. I think about my daughter’s laughter, something I’ve not heard in weeks. So much has been lost to silence.

 The storm—and the birds—quiet. I shiver, wet clothes clinging to skin. My daughter’s face appears in her window, expression obscured by the rain. When she was a toddler, she would press her ear against my heart. She loved the mystery of heartbeats, fearing that when she moved her ear away, my heart’s beating would cease. It’s called faith, I once told her. You have to believe in my heart, even when you can’t hear it. I bet if you close your eyes and really listen, you’ll be able to hear it even when I’m not here.

 It's not silence that I’m resisting, but the type of silence that has filled our home the past few days. The type of silence that commences with one word, mutating into a cruel beast, taunting, stroking egos and placing blame. It’s the silence of self-justification—of telling oneself I’m right.   

I’m craving a different silence. I’m craving the cloaked reprieve of the tempest—when synchronous hearts halt, briefly, only to thrum stronger in the aftermath. Or the type of silence that precedes the heaving, the labor, and the repercussions.

 Scooting my chair out of her view, I wonder if these birds hate their mother for leaving them to weather the storm alone. I wonder if, when she does return with food, they will trust her as they did before. For isn’t this a life lesson? We learn from experience, from how we endure the storm.

 Hesitant, questioning chirps startle me. A small flute quartet, barely audible. Listen, I whisper. If I listen. If I have faith. But, like so many pieces I’ve started, I don’t know how to finish the sentence. I don’t know what follows the if.

 My heartbeat thuds in my eardrums. Mother bird, where are you? How can you leave them alone in the storm?

I lean forward, searching for my daughter’s face. Gone. She’s disappeared and I’m left alone with the baby birds’ cries, echoing through me. It’s all I hear, long after the storm seeps into the night and I make my way inside. Long after I exhale—a proclamation—and wrap my arms around her, allowing my apology to permeate new silence.

Adrianna Sanchez-Lopez (she/her) resides in Colorado. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Prose Online, Five Minutes, The Headlight Review, and elsewhere. Learn more about Adrianna at adriannasanchezlopez.com.