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I startled myself into existence today with the sound of my own voice. The vibrations started in my throat, filled my ears, and was all I could hear; deep and creaking like antique wooden stairs.
Before that moment, I was slowly losing myself to darkness; a pitch black that inched closer and closer to my core. I need to keep going on so that I am useful; so that I am wanted. I need to smile so that I can be loved. Speak so that I can be remembered. Laugh so that I can be heard. Or else I will go mad in the vacuum of apathy and those insurpassable distances between people. I will disintegrate into nothingness. These thoughts consumed me. They numbed my fingers, then my face, then my legs, then my heart. They shattered the buoyant parts of me, scattering them into the people around me, leaving me to sink; heavy, heavy, heavy.
The wind raced through the bare November branches and the clouds howled across the gray sky. A tune crept into my mind, the first time this had happened in a long time. I had the sudden urge to try to hum it, and somehow found the audacity to do it. The sounds vibrated through my throat, through my ears, through my stomach. It rippled across my skin with its beauty. Not the beauty of my voice, nor of my weak attempt at a vibrato, but of the way the sound left me and expanded into the world. A miracle happened; I felt cold and hungry, feelings I thought I had forgotten. For the first time in recent memory, I wanted something. Warmth. A Japanese sweet potato sandwich from Clover.
Justine Jang