The unsettling eerie sound of silence amidst chaos

Anxious thoughts always supersede.

I stand at my window and stare at the trees in front of me. A dog barks in the distance and brings in my focus. I hear the low rise and fall of a police siren, and landing planes rise to a crescendo that is never met. The wind moves trees uncomfortably in their roots.

I wrap my arms around me and keep staring. As if I’m waiting for something to disrupt the silence of the sounds around me.

A crash. A bang. Something.

An anxiety sits inside me swirling, as I start to sway along with the tree. A large elm that usually greets me as I leave the house. But this time I wasn’t leaving, so it just danced with me as I stood there.

I could have been there for hours, but my phone said 8 minutes. I didn’t know which to believe — a clock or my anxiety. Usually my anxiety wins, but this time I let myself believe my phone.

Even though I had lost trust in it a while ago.

Opening it again, my blood shot eyes begin to dry out as I stare at videos and photos of terror. Young Black and Brown people running away and getting pulled out of cars. I listen to the screams.

I close my phone and hear silence again.

Forcing myself to move around the house, I try and put on something on to distract from the lack of.

The laughter from podcasts are jarring. Music banged loudly. TV shows just ended up hiding what I really wanted to listen to.

The silence.

My ears yearned for the hum of the eerie sound of nothing.

I typed ‘Hounslow’ into Twitter again to check live updates. Other than the obvious misinformation, nothing was happening.

But my heart was beating as if it was. As if the windows were crashing around me, and people storming into the house.

Because it wasn’t an attack that scared me. It was the fact that they were there.

It was them. Just being. Existing.

I guess in the same way they fear me, I fear them.

My very existence enrages them, and their existence hollows me out.

I go back to the window and watch the tree. The wind has calmed and it no longer dances. The dog is being fed, I assume, as his barks no longer fill my ears.

No sirens, no screams.

Just the loud beating of my heart.