Mute by choice

It's 4am and I'm at the bench again.

Just thinking. No talking.

It's 4am and the street lights are turning off one by one.

The dawn is coming and it's freezing cold out here.

It's 4am and I'm alone on my bench with just my thoughts to keep me company.

Until.

The girl is sat on her own, on a bench in the middle of the park. She looks sad and the boy wants to know why. He stands by the broken and bent fences, wondering whether to approach the sad, sad girl. He doesn't.

I haven't talked since I was 8 years old.

No one ever really asked why. They didn't really care.

I don't know if I could ever talk again, I mean, my vocal chords will be all torn and disused by now.

I like to think of them like an old grand piano. All dusty, a sad sight in an old faded music room.

The next day, the boy nearly works up the courage to go and talk to the girl. She just looks so utterly alone and he thinks he knows how she feels. Today, he watches as she writes in an old notebook. Her hair falls across her face and hides her sadness like a curtain. She is beautiful, he thinks.

Today someone tried to talk to me. Makes a change, I guess. I must have looked stupid, just sitting there, not talking.

She probably thought I would reply to her question of "How are you?"

Has she not been paying attention for the last 10 years, or has she just moved here? I don't even know.

She walked away after a while. No one stays. I watch her footprints fade away as the day goes by.

The boy sees her cry the next day. It takes everything he is made of to stop him running up to her and asking what's wrong. But he hangs back in the shadows because he, more than anyone, knows how frustrating it is when strangers ask you how you feel, if you're okay. There is no point in reassuring them, so you just say that everything's fine. He wipes away a tear of his own and watches as the sun goes down and the light casts golden shadows across the park.

There is a boy that watches me everyday. I don't think he's stalking me, I think he's maybe just watching.

There is a difference. I think.

He watches me from the end of school until 9 o'clock and then he's back again the next morning before school.

I don't know why I find him interesting. But I do.

The boy goes and sits with the girl on the bench on the 21st day. He doesn't speak, just sits. No communication is necessary, they just sit in each others company and enjoy the feeling of being not quite alone.

The boy is nice. He doesn't talk to me like everyone else. He just sits there and I think he understands.

I showed him my notebook today. The notebook.

The boy carefully reads the hastily scribbled notes, the lyrics, the hate. He reads a story about how a girl just didn't feel like talking and how she hated herself. He read a story about a girl who wrote songs and played guitar and lived in a world in her head because reality just sucked. He read this story and when he was done, he knew there were no words. He simply sat and helped to lift the burden of living and being good enough off the girl's shoulders for just a moment.

The boy is nice.

I like him a lot. He understands and that is enough for now.