Sometime around twelve
On a weekend night
Long ago in August.
There was a party
For which a person
Decided to throw
In honor of his own birthday.
The birthday was insignificant,
But the party he threw
Would change his life forever.
How is this possible? You might ask.
It's but one single birthday,
How could that possibly change one's life?
The answer is not all that easy to come by,
So I think that you need to think this over.
He drank a little on that night.
All alone in his office.
It was dark, and the halls were empty.
Even when he was alone,
He did not really feel it.
In fact, he was really quite content.
He sat at the desk in his measly little cubicle
At his computer when the phone rang.
Obediently, he answered his own phone
To find an old friend on the other end.
The friend happened to remember his birthday
And- offered to treat him to a proper drink.
Looking around his office for a few moments,
He realized that there was nothing else to do
And met his friend at a pub by his office.
They didn't really order anything,
But instead enjoyed each other's presence.
They talked over a few glasses of cola
About the days they shared back in NYU
And then noticing the time, they departed.
The office man slowly walked home.
He wished he had a friend to talk to,
But found nobody to converse with.
Quietly, he listened to the silence.
The city streets, for once, were silent.
How queer, he thought.
In a city as large as this,
Why would it be silent?
He looked around him
And at the rest of the street.
To his surprise, there were people.
People standing on the side of the road.
They were not staring at him,
They were not staring at anything.
The street was not looking into the distance,
But it seemed to look at something.
He considered this occasion weird
And decided to continue walking home.
He tried to whistle something
In order to break the silence,
But the only sound that came
Was silence and air passing dry lips.
He cursed the silence and tried to think.
No thoughts came, except for wanting noise.
He so desperately wanted sound_
Anything to break the silence.
It was about this time when
He had no idea where he was.
But this didn't matter to him any more.
He was worried about the silence.
Must have sound, he thought.
A breaking window,
Slamming an old door,
A clattering trash can,
Anything at all.
Nothing mattered, nothing changed.
He tried to make as much noise as possible
And yet, the silence engulfed it.
It sucked every noise like a vacuum
But also dared someone to break it.
It was around this time when the silence
Started to give anyone who was listening
A feeling of hearing something at a frequency
That was much too high to actually hear.
Then there was a ringing.
It was quite and low at first,
But then it slowly rose higher.
Also, it grew immensely in volume,
Getting so intense that he screamed in pain.
The people of the street looked at him now,
But he did not really care about them.
He wanted the ringing, the pain, to stop.
Instinctively, he removed his tie
And unbuttoned the top few of his shirt.
Regardless, the ringing grew louder still
And the pain brought him to his hands and knees.
In his moment of hell on his birthday,
He flashed back to his friend at the pub.
They were talking about work and girls,
When his friend presented him with a gift.
His friend told him that it was a ring
And that it was magical beyond belief.
'If you'd truly wish anything from your heart,
It would certainly come true,'� his friend informed.
POP!! All of the pain he had felt disappeared,
But it caused him to swallow the lump in his throat.
'Shoot!!!'� he screamed as he thought, 'that hurt like heck!'
Being back in reality, he saw a woman standing over him.
Her mouth was moving, but he didn't hear her.
Everything was silent again.
No buzzing, and no ringing.
Then someone grabbed him
And put him in a stretcher.
In his confusion, the ringing
Echoed in the silence.
As he was lifted and put
Silently into an ambulance,
He looked at his hand
To find the magical ring.
Then he realized what he wished
From the bottom of his heart.
He wished as he walked home
For some sounds to calm his nerves,
But then he heard so much noise
That he would never hear any more.

Want to comment on this Poetry? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Poetry and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...