My silence is born out of a fundamental dishonesty. I cannot speak because I cannot lie, and I cannot remain silent because I cannot speak the truth. What an interesting and logical paradox. The suppression of truth inevitably leads to one talking to oneself. The “I” becomes the only person you can speak to without suffering a crushing shame.
This is what he told me that afternoon, squinting through the cigarette smoke with only the slightest trace of a cynical smile on his face. This point is important. When he lied he laughed out loud and when he told the truth there was only the residue of a smile left on his face.
It made no sense to me, nonetheless, because the statement was uttered without any context and I could only answer with a silence of my own, realising at that very moment that no answer was required of me.
I think I might have been speaking to myself. There was no man.
I was smoking a cigarette.
It could have been mine.
I’m sure it was mine.
My laugh.
My smile.
Watching myself later on down the road, older and less wise, a fool for waiting so long, letting things decay, letting things sit in my head like old ladies waiting for the bus. They die like that and no one finds them. Unless you write them all down, no one finds the corpses in your head, those bloated, stinking things that once possessed the vitality of youth and novelty.
Is this cynicism? Letting things die before their time. Perhaps. But how would I know.
I kept on walking. Squinting through the cigarette smoke, laughing that little laugh of mine, laughing that I could not answer my own questions, my own musings, and more than this, that I do not expect an answer. I just keep on laughing or smiling. It all depends on the truth of the matter.
I just sat myself down at the bus stop and waited. Not old yet. But it’s coming. I feel it in the winters. I must write this down or it will be lost. I will be lost.
When will the bus come? I’m scared that I will be left here, dead and wilting. Perhaps the voice won’t stop. Maybe I won’t stop. And no one will find me. They could find the corpse, but they would be unable to find me, caught as I would be, in the labyrinth of almost being, an apartment with no doors, cats everywhere and a refrigerator door opened, spilled milk and running water.
When will the bus come? I need to know. We need to know. Know the schedule of the thing you fear.