Sound didn’t wait outside. It never does. It crashed in, uninvited. Unannounced. All-consuming in the narrow hallway, filling the space before I could embrace it.
I heard it before I saw it, sharp echoes of boots on tile, the low murmur of someone talking too loud into a phone, the laugh that wasn’t meant for me but landed anyway.
By the time I reached the room, Sound was already there. Sprawled across furniture, stretched out on the floorboards, tucked into every corner like it had always belonged. Moving constantly around me, a dance of focus darting between reality and paranoia. Rattled windowpanes. Clicking pens. Humming fans. It all tapped restless fingers against my skull.
I couldn’t hear my own thoughts over it. Couldn’t remember what quiet was. Not when Sound buzzed in the light, whistled in the wind, purred from the fridge.
Sound was clever like that. Knew how to mimic joy in the echo of safety. A song from a memory I didn’t ask for, pulling at threads I thought I’d knotted shut. The gentle coo of a mourning dove in the early morning. Static from a TV on the wrong channel.
It wrapped itself around me, like the conversation at a party I didn’t want to attend, where every voice expects an answer and none of them pause to breathe.
Sometimes Sound became the people I know. Not the real ones, but suggestions of them. My name called from another room. Footsteps on the stairs. A caught behind a closed door. Enough to make me turn my head. Enough to make me wonder if I was ever truly alone.
I tried to shut it out. I tried to drown it out, tried to block Sound from my mind. I turned up the music, covered my ears, screamed until my throat was hoarse and lungs empty. But Sound just layered itself, noise upon noise, until every distraction had their own ghost.
Because Sound is persistent. Sometimes it’s just a presence, a background character in the storyline of your life. The hiss of a steam in a café. The clatter of cutlery on ceramic. A phone buzzing on a table.
But sometimes, Sound forgets to soften its edges, and the background becomes a roar you cannot escape.
Photo courtesy of Dibakar Roy