It is like a low bullet wound to the skull. At first it whispers to you, dances, playfully frolicking alongside you.
Until it leaves you all alone. Deserted and silent.
Silence that grows like a cancer.
I have walked these austere corridors for years, seen the sorrow spoil in eyes, the year-long mist that glides from room to room.
I have seen the Madonnas, veiled in towels, their faces oblong, carved in wood.
I have smelled the bleach that floats in the air like a presence.
I have heard the obnoxious clock, ticking off minutes that seem like hours.
Silence like a cancer grows.
I knew it was him. Despite the cords and plugs that grew like ivy round a fence post, the vines that hung from cold, metal rods of machinery, I knew.
His golden straw hair had turned into a whisper of white candyfloss.
The faint lines of journeys I did not share, were now folds, and crevasses.
Eyes of pained expression looked, but could not see.
The light of his skin, a bewitched halo that turned salty rain into ice.
His delicate needle like nose and antennae thin lips were milky lit.
I stood paralysed, weeping silent screams of pain and suffering.
Pain and suffering I knew only too well. He lay in that room. A room with walls that told stories of broken hearts and wished upon dreams never to be seen again. He was there, but barely existing.
The silence like a cancer grows.
Seven years old and unaware on that shore, I raced with my father.
My heart, bursting with excitement as my legs carried me faster.
The sand barely touching my feet. His flaxen hair had glistened in the later afternoon sun as he scooped me up in his arms as if I was the most precious thing to him.
Could I tell? Could I see the sorrow and longing to leave in his eyes?
The dark sadness of diminishing hope, blurry, beaten and blue.
Or was it hidden beneath the waves of guilt and despair. Waves that overflowed and washed me ashore like a piece of tossed up driftwood.
The silence like a cancer began to grow.
As I look at him, the pain splinters me. Him. The patient. My father. I am like cracked glass.
Emotions torn apart, I am left battered, scarred and worn. Tears began to deeply flood.
I taste salt, my own fear. Fear of what I have missed, fear of what is yet to come.
It was his choice. His choice to leave, to never come back.
My tongue is betrayed by pain. Pain that falls like a stone upon a broken back.
It is now my choice. My deep, deep drum beat dissolves into asymmetry.
As I look to my right, I see doctors, pacing back and forth, but seemingly running in slow motion.
I see a place where God is absent and present. A place of incarnate deaths and resurrections. A place of forgiveness? A place of silence.
If he looked, would he have seen it? The weary scars of heartache. The suffering.
Would he have heard it? The rose that withers, as its petals fell to the ground. The suffering.
Would he have smelt it? The countless flames that burned my heart. The suffering.
Would he have tasted it? Felt it? The suffering.
The silence. The silence that grew like a cancer.
ALICIA ROSEVEAR
Year 13, Taieri College
