Loudest Silence

It was a scorching August day. The heat pressed against my window as I heard a knock on my door.

And there she stood.

With disheveled hair and piercing blue eyes, it felt like I'd glimpsed her countless times before. She greeted me with fervor, her face and hands bearing the marks of hidden struggles. Clinging to her guitar, she waited for my response. We were both lost, adrift in confusion, but she was eager to connect. Back then, I should've realized she was a fighter, but I remained blind to her depths. Our parents orchestrated our meeting, hoping for solace in each other's company. It turned out she harbored a love for music like me, but her passion for creation burned even brighter.

She was a girl with short, unruly curls, eyes of vivid blue, dressed in a chaotic floral pattern. I still remember how she grasped my hand, not giving me a chance to judge her. Her beauty lay in the way she shattered barriers. She showed me so much that day, etching our names into our very first guitar.

With a smile ever-present when we met, she said, "A good band needs a catchy name, doesn't it?"

Our families sent us to spend time together, providing a reprieve from conflicts with my brother or a chance to learn something new. Fortunately, she was always there. Initially, the idea didn't bother me, but as time passed, I saw her determination for even the simplest tasks. My curiosity grew.

Our room was cramped, with only a handful of instruments and basic furniture. I remember that she'd draw and jot down ideas for our music. Her energy and words were infectious. She was like a beacon of light, and infusing the room with vitality. She adored sunflowers, placing a jar in front of the house, replenishing it as she entered.

And she would say, "If you don't put in the effort for the flower to thrive, any flower can wither. But with enough effort, even a sunflower can bloom inside a jar. That's what our music is about too. 'Sunflower seeds,' remember?"

This became her mantra. Everything she did, she was like a sunflower. She worked tirelessly to perfect her guitar and acquire a drum set. Even with bruises and bandaged fingers, her hands were strong. She'd carve our band's name with hope to bring me joy.

But with time, I began to see the change in her.

We thought we were embarking on a new adventure. An escape from our troubles.

She found our rhythm, chose a band name, and penned our first song together. I remember her keeping me up all night, urging me to write, gently prodding me to stay awake.

She was like the sunflowers she cherished - radiant, bright, and captivating.

Over time, she changed.

The bag that once hung proudly by the door now lay forgotten on the ground. She'd dig her nails into the floor or the board, looking around in despair. She no longer tended to the jar with the sunflower. Her guitar sat neglected, replaced by empty stares.

It was as if she feared losing something precious.

And when she was frustrated, she'd wander among the sunflower fields near our sanctuary.

Or she'd converse with the bird she'd bought weeks ago. It was a companion she'd acquired after a disagreement with her mother, hoping to find solace in its company. Initially, we laughed and joked about the bird, as if she were venting her frustrations on it like a child. But over time, a genuine bond formed. Even that connection seemed to wane.

She began to withdraw further. The bands she used to wear on her hands and face, supposedly to keep injuries at bay, were now discarded.

I'd see her in moments of calmness, her hands gently caressing the sunflowers, her gaze fixed on the setting sun.

Then, a darker shift in her personality emerged. Her words growing sparse, her directions more pointed.

She'd scream and cry without cause, disappearing for days on end.

She'd hurl words she didn't truly mean.

"What are you so afraid of!?"

"You! I am afraid of you! Everything you might become...."

Over time, she grew even more distant. Her gaze turned vacant. She'd shun conversation, drowning me in silence, the music played quietly. The once passionate grip on her guitar was now lifeless. The board that used to brim with ideas lay barren, save for the dates.

Our songs no longer escaped the realities we faced. They now only escaped each other.

It was like trying to catch her as she slipped through my fingers.

But in the most still way possible.

Her silence grew deafening.

Then, one day, she noticed the pet bird she'd bought was ailing. Much like the light within her, the bird had dimmed. It no longer chirped, no longer protested our noise. It was as if our silence had even affected the freest spirit among us. The symbol of our freedom was withering, mirroring our fading hopes.

Finally, she let the bird go. Her hands trembled, as if touched by ice, as she slowly opened the window. It was perhaps the first time in weeks that I saw desperation in her eyes, mingled with sadness. She wept openly, her hands shaking like a child's as she released the bird and turned to me.

"We don't need to be confined anymore. We can be free, can't we?"

She no longer spoke to me. She had grown numb, spending all her time in the sunflower fields.

Our group, Sunflower Seeds, was no longer a source of joy. It had become a silence.

So, I resolved to shatter that silence.

I tried to draw her out of her cocoon of silence, but I only seemed to make it worse.

We argued and shouted over everything.

I couldn't grasp her.

"Why won't you just talk to me!? I've been trying everything to keep you close! Just talk to me!"

As her words hung heavily in the air, a profound realization washed over me. It wasn't just her silence that resonated, but my own. Our silences clashed, drowning out any chance of understanding.

She gazed at me, her eyes holding a mix of resignation and compassion. "I forgive you. It's not your fault," she murmured.

Her words pierced through me, leaving a wound that would never truly heal. The weight of her forgiveness pressed upon my chest, as if she had handed me a burden I could never fully bear.

I came to understand the depth of my own folly. Her silence had been her plea, an unspoken cry for someone to truly hear her. But my own struggles and the cacophony of my family issues had muffled her voice, drowned out her pain.

As the days dragged on, the truth began to unravel, like the fraying threads of a long-forgotten tapestry. It was her own family who let her to our suffocating house. They admitted that her illness was their source of shame.

I felt all pain and sorrow wash over me.

But you were the one who didn't listen to her.

Every memory that we had, was just forced for her and she had to smile, to even bring me to see joy.

You were the one who neglected her.

Nobody listened to her, let alone heard her voice, or her silence.

You were the one that silenced her!

She always played her notes with hope, so she could have a sound, a voice to recall. Her eyes were filled with sorrow, yet she looked at the ones around her with joy.

Her once cherished sunflowers, symbols of vitality and life, now bore a solemn weight. They loomed tall in the garden, casting long shadows that seemed to echo with her essence. The vibrant yellow petals gently stood there, murmurings of pain she could never quite put into words.

I grasped the truth now. She wasn't merely fleeing her family, but a pervasive silence that smothered her very being. She pushed me to believe that our voices could harmonize, drowning out the painful echoes of our pasts. Perhaps she clung to the hope that we were kindred spirits, both ensnared in a suffocating cocoon of silence.

She was my voice, but my silence got louder. And made her drown in her own.

I walked slowly inside the room we made music. The sun gently hit as the smell of flowers entered with a breeze. There stood our board with a cold surface and a final text on it. Something I had never seen when we first met. It wrote, "You can be heard, only if you scream loud enough for it!" with a smile drawn underneath it.

So she knew.

It was then, in that stark moment of revelation, that I understood.

There wrote our first's songs name, "voice", with the only fragment left of her.

I smiled.

"I can hear you now."