It's like a trumpet which can't quite get the sound out. The sound of the father's plea. He must be saying, "Now what?" "What" is definitely the second word. Like the slow grind of a drill through bone, his child's cries have been persistently scratching at the air.
Were I to keep my head just on the windowsill, it would feel like being on a boat. Gentle, cool mist and the waves of occasional cars against the road. Like low tide shifting in on sand, they flood in and pull back in slow, easy breaths.
The cry chews through every bit of wall, however, and even the outermost edges are not unscathed. It is like this every night. Between the cotton-muffed hum of the television which, ironically, is at a tasteful volume, are the jabs of tears and howl that shake the skeleton awake from within your muscles.
She is mute, but for the screams. Or is it he? Who can tell? It is wordless, just a long, attempt to lull the weakness and rancid pain inside. It bubbles up against the ribs and billows into a cloud of one-voweled ache. Terror spills, and I can feel her jaw, her mouth, her lips, her teeth, falling, shaking, wishing they could bang against the ground.
He has stopped speaking to her, but now lets her wail into the room beneath me, filling the carpet with the heat of her breath. She becomes a pulse.
My ears pull inward toward the edges of the pond that is my room. I hear the slow drip of water from a faucet and the television adjacent to me, playing the news. My soul is riding the wave, away from her pain because it cannot know it.
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