Destination Unknown

We will meet directly at the airport or downtown. We’ll see each other and we’ll pause for a second. Should we hug? Yes. Probably. I won’t linger too much even though I want to. We won’t kiss. You’ll ask me whether you can help me with my baggage. 

That’s alright. I just have one bag. Also, I don’t feel very comfortable with people carrying my stuff. 

Feminism, you’ll say.

Yeah, right. 

We’ll get in the car or we’ll take the city bus or the train. We’ll share the awkward silence, which, if you think about it, isn’t really awkward. It is just accumulated tension. An acknowledgement of longing, if you wish. 

I’m happy you agreed to meet me. 

You’ll smile.

You’ll try to be funny. I’ll try to be funny. 

Exaggerated language and forced laughs. Let’s skip the funny parts. It’s better to leave the silence to take over. Neither of us will say what we want to, anyway. And even if we’d do, it will not capture it. We’d feel like losers. We’ll use discrete touches to cover up the shame of not being able to articulate. 

We understand each other better when we don’t speak. 

Then, we’ll reach the place. We’ll enter an empty room. Comments on the furniture. The awkward silence creeps in again. This time, it’s the pause in between words.

I smile. You smile.

Are we smiling for the same reason?

There’s room for a joke here, but we’ll refrain from it. 

Alright then. I’ll take a shower. 

Can I join? 

I can’t stop you, can I?

We both want silence, but neither of us can’t seem to stop talking. We need the words to cover up the spaces. To distract us from what we’re most afraid of.

Tea? 

Yes, please. 


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Real Words

by Carla Agoras

Everyone knows how it feels to lack the words to express the joy or the sorrow or the love.


Where are the words?

There are no words.

There is no word that wouldn’t trivialise the beauty, and the sorrow, and the stillness, and the hope. So you retreat in silence, this grandiose mistress of everything that cannot be expressed.


Where are the words?

I have no words.

So we sit in silence and the silence sits in us.

Maybe we’ll talk later about it, but the language will fail us. And the impossibility of articulation will be the ultimate validation of realness.

It was real because I can’t express it, I’ll say to my children.

Don’t worry, sweetheart. The other children don’t have to understand.
But mom, what happens when there are too many words? When there’s a cluster of unfinished words bursting their way into a sentence that will never make sense?

Because you intuit the words, doesn’t mean you know the words.
How could one even make up their mind?


Bow, break down, buckle, capitulate, cave in, cease, give in, give away, go down, pass away, perish, quit, wilt, yield.
Collapse?


Maybe… I’m not a native speaker, you see… never was, never will be.
Is it still real if you have all the words but you just can’t decide?
I’m afraid not.