I Witness Alice Break the Silence

Alice says her story is too personal to say out loud in a quiet place.
I tell her okay, then ask if I can hold her for a minute. She says yes.
(She lowers her arms after thirty seconds.)

Alice knows, intimately, how to embrace the quiet.

Alice spends her nights praying for words, for phrases,
for sentences that mean exactly what she needs them to mean,
but she comes up empty every time.

Silence is a function of perpetual growth , she tells me.
This is what her mother has taught so well.

I want to tell her: Your silence has no home here .
I want to tell her: Here your words are safe.

Alice whispers her heartache and I reach for her again.

She answers my thoughts.
Alice says: Silence has been my home for so long.

She is shouting now:
I WANT TO LIVE SOMEWHERE NEW.

By Samantha Brynn

Biography:

Always too soft and always looking for a fight, Samantha Brynn is a sarcastic New Yorker who cares too much about people she thinks she knows. She likes pretending to be other people on stages and in general. She is not the monster under your bed. She is not a black cat at your door. She is not a ghost, but a person. Honestly.