Noise

I’m not demented. Demented people hear voices telling them & instructing them what to do. I do hear and feel voices, constantly in fact, but they are never talking to me. Right now i can hear the guys across the street are having an argument, thinking no one can hear them. Blocks away a boy is whispering lies to his girlfriend. Somewhere, maybe miles from here, a woman is cursing softly to herself as she sits in her car.

I do hear these voices, but I hear everything else as well, and I can’t make it stop. I hear that woman imprecating alone in her car, but I also hear the relays clicking in the traffic light above her, the caterwauling from the radios in the surrounding cars, the rustle of feathers as a flock of birds passes nearby. My head is filled by a constant cacophony, a wall of incomprehensible white noise with snippets made clear for brief, maddening moments. My life is an avalanche of sound, and it is burying me alive.