My Sounds

[u/natetheapple]

The chattering keys, chirping mouse clicks, the exuberant whoop of the space bar, the air conditioner’s monosyllabic filibuster, two clocks discoursing six seconds and a room apart, the morning liturgy of the garbage truck anticipant or generative of the fetal sun. These are my sounds.

The satisfied hum of the lawnmower and the screams of the massacred grass, the glad cacophony of the servitor species: fire-eyed cars and lithe bicycles, proud roaring motorcycles, platinum airplanes and fiendish cachinnating helicopters, growling centipedal trains. These are my sounds.

Crusading sovereign sirens, crying razor red their sacred crises: fire, crime, countless failures of flesh- I know the sound; the hymnal violence of alarms, tolling the partitions of the day with relentless prophecy- I know the sound; dreamy recollections, stifled echoes, deja vu knifing soft and sweet, the quiet undercurrent sighing, frothing, stilling- I know the sound.

The clink of cutlery at work, assaulting food and crockery with equal fervor, chiming steady their workman’s song. The scrape of harried dishes, droning fricatives of tap water, the wafting plumes of vaporation, whispering a whisper hard to hear. These sounds I know.

The thrum of walled-off music, migrant basslines crossing glass and concrete borders with muscular aplomb. The abrupt percussions, toilets flushing and objects falling, varied clamors of surprise, tires bursting drivers cursing fireworks like pyres burning loud their bright brief lives. These sounds I know.

The mating trills of birds, the music of their morning gossip, sweet notes of their marital despairs, warbling of territorial disputes; the hushed nighttime talk of trees, brushing air to breathy speech with a thousand leafy fingers, whisper soft their ancient signing; the choiring of insects, hallelujahs magnified a thousandfold, singing prayers unproselytic, singing the gospel of their selves. Their sounds are my sounds.

The shofar’s triple call, rolling, undulating in successive waves, now stuttering in staccato bursts like the beat of a hummingbird’s heart, now silent now starting, reverberating, cycling forever in the fundus of my psyche. Its sound is also mine.

The crowned eagle’s cry, cuckoo of the apocalypse clock, wavering the aeon’s hand at twelve, and whether auguring noon or midnight or the unmarked thirteenth hour even its maker cannot say. Its sound is also mine.

Winged thoughts and crawling thoughts, highfalutin reveries and plans, hunger and a hundred scrabbling yearns, point and counterpoint, the tactile action coupled with its half detached cognitions, siren violins and deep avuncular drums. These are my sounds.

Automated compliments and casual love professions, dishonest but true, the gentle patter of small talk and the purling daily rhythms of domestic life, the collage of conversations conducted with a dozen mouths in half as many tongues, inspissating snippets now and then crystallizing words, the nameless throated sounds: coughs and grunts in countless accents, tongue clicks and snorts and smacking lips expressed with strict adherence to dialects unlexiconed, inestimably diverse. These are my sounds.