Voiceless

    Up here, where there are golden silvery clouds, and white flowing dresses. Up here, with the people who aren’t quite there, the people who disappear and flicker out of sight if the wind blows too hard. Sometimes they disappear, fade into nothingness, but I don’t, I don’t want to.

     No, there’s a girl down there who waits for me, she whispers me her dreams and wishes, asks for answers, sometimes I give them to her, sometimes I don’t. 

    The girl down beneath me smiles, the little twelve year old boy smiles back. He says something that makes her laugh. They are sitting in a large oak, just above a crumbling morning cemetery. Both have their papers out, but I know they aren’t filling out the questions on it. They are doodling, pictures of people, of butterflies and rocket ships. Care free, the girl twists one of her golden braids absentmindedly, she’s admiring something in the distance. The boy adjusts his glasses and whispers something that makes the girl laugh silently, they are siblings, twins, although not many can tell. The girl has a glowing light around her, an aurora that pulls people to her like magnets, although she does not need them, she is lost in her own little world. The boy has a different type of energy to him. It’s something sweet and innocent, something steady, that believes in the good. They don’t argue, ever, I’m not sure why, but they love each other, they’ve been through too much together to disagree. The boy sighs, which ends with a coughing fit, then tucks his paper into his backpack and slides from the tree. The girl watches him trudge through the dewy grass of the cemetery, then looks up at the sky, I can hear her thoughts. She cannot speak to anyone but me.

     “I think I’ll tell them that I love the hyacinths after it’s rained, when the dew drops sparkle on them,” The girl tells me, I nod. “and maybe that every time someone asks who I am, I answer them, then I tell them that they look beautiful.”  She slips to the ground, then leaps around like a ballerina, singing a silent song to me.

     “I’ll tell them I’m happy, 

      and I’ll tell them I’m sad,

      and I’ll tell them I’m happy, 

      although I’m mad!” She sings gleefully.

     “I’ll tell them you’re up there

      and you listen to me,

     I’ll tell them what it feels like to be soundly free!” Her clear voice rings out in our heads, not in our ears. “Maybe I’ll say I love to dance,” She confides to me. Then shakes her head, every day at this cemetery she tells me. 

    The girl twirls out of the cemetery, down a crumbling gravel road, her shoes have holes in them, and her dress is torn, yet she looks like a princess. A twirling ballerina-princess. The girl waits for an old blue truck to rumble by, then continues to whirl.

   The doctor looks at the little girl, she sits smiling in his cold grey office.

   “We can give you your voice back, although it is a complicated surgery…” the doctor continues to talk, but I can tell the girl is no longer listening, she is dreaming of the things she would tell everybody. She’d tell them how she noticed that the clouds turned grey before a storm, or that the same blue bird sat in the maple tree in front of the house every morning. The girl’s brother coughed, and coughed again. The doctor puts the stethoscope he had been holding to the boys back, his face crinkles.

    The girl and the boy sit in the old oak, the boy is thinner, the girl is sadder, they are both slightly older. The boy is leaning on the girl, but I know that underneath he is the one supporting her. The girl closes her eyes, breaths, then opens them again, and gives the boy her hand. They leap from the tree, barely landing it. The girl drags the boy through the cemetery, her voice just a barely audible whisper. She points towards the road, but the boy can’t keep up. They reach the entrance, the girl trying to tell him something. Crunching across the road the boy stumbles, the girl turns to help him. She isn’t fast enough, she knows it, she isn’t loud enough, she knows it, but she tries. The timeworn blue truck barged through the gravel, turning the corner. The girl whisper screams, but the boy can’t hear her over his coughs. 

    Braids flying she dove, I watched it in slow motion, oddly disconnected, I knew what would happen, but I didn’t feel anything. The old blue truck stopped, but it was too late. 

     “Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.” On it went, for forever and ever. The sound was annoying, and I wanted it to stop, but it never did. It didn’t seem to annoy the girl, who sat in the cold grey hospital room, where the lights blasted, and the people whispered instead of talked. The girl hadn’t said a word, instead she just whispers to me in her head.

     “I’ll tell him I’m sorry for never learning sign language, I’ll tell him he’s smart, and should never change. I’ll tell him he’s a fighter, I’ll tell him everything, but he needs to listen.” She still has tears on her cheeks, her hair is still a mess, her dress is still torn, her shoes still have holes, nothing has changed. Yet, she no longer looks like a princess, she doesn’t dance like a ballerina, just lets the water drip from her eyes. The doctor walks into the room, I can’t hear what he says, it’s muffled from up here. The girl shakes her head, but stands up and starts to follow him out of the room, she points back towards the bed, the doctor nods, but gives her a gentle nudge towards the door. The two walk out of the room, looking like two broken people. 

      The empty room, save for the bed, was full of that annoying beep. On and on and on, until it stopped. The beep turned into a steady noise, a line you might call it. The girl wasn’t there, the doctor wasn’t either.

       People ran, rushing, yelling, throwing things, hitting buttons, no one noticed the silent girl standing in the corner, watching. The doctors and nurses stopped suddenly, no one spoke. When they did the little girl didn’t hear it, she just watched the boy. The boy who no longer shone with a sparkling sweetness, the other half of her, no longer there

     Half of a heart was all she had, and that is never enough for a person. She was healed properly, cured as best they could. But she was silent, they restored her throat, but they try as they might, a broken heart can never be fixed.