Sotto Voce

To strip away this incessant chatter, yes, but what lies underneath it? Death, of course, or our fear of death. Which is why we talk so much, bury our heads in books, turn forests into pages and pages into mirrors in which we see ourselves appear and disappear. When I look up from the story I've been reading about the Jews in Nazi Germany and the silence that closed their mouths forever, I see a girl outside the cafe smiling in at her father who smiles back but cannot hear her. She makes all kinds of gestures with her hands, mimes herself inside an invisible box and breaks down laughing. Then she gathers her breath and blows it against the window. It is not snowing outside, the leaves have hardly begun to turn, the season is merely poised for the long descent, but still the glass steams up. And in this little cloud of warmth that's come from deep inside her body, she writes a single joyful word, which vanishes almost before she finishes.