10 Fingers To Understand Silence Is Not An Absolute
I.
He lived without a singular sense. His hands felt sounds at his throat, resonating in his head; a voice muted because it had no comparison.
II.
He voiced his language, clumsy at first, in the intricate dance of his fingers. Frustration was best countered with an upright middle finger.
III.
He smiled at her fingers speaking like a 3 year old: focused, exaggerated movements and incorrect spelling. No need to shout, he jokingly chided.
IV.
A text flickered on her screen.
“Take me to a concert. Bring me some ear plugs?”
Between the speaker and sub-woofer he found the sweet spot.
V.
The argument gesticulated angrily. She turned her back to silence. His hand reached to her shoulder, cold as it was, to apologise.
VI.
He uncrumpled the letter, like peeling a mandarin, to devour the words written he had spat out the night before. A hand to speak words when no voice attended.
VII.
Silence has layers, nuances, light and shadow, he said. It’s not an absolute.
Why are you silent with me? she asked. Will you listen?
She leaned in and kissed him.
Over the time I’ve been writing twitter fiction, I have come to appreciate the brevity of the form, limited as it is to 140 characters. It is, in essence, to capture a breath of moment, holding it for a little while and expecting the release and exhalation.
I like the number seven, echoing The Seven Ages of Man by Jacques in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” Thus my collections of twitfic are anthologies focused on a theme or have a narrative thread.
Playing with form allows me to link these brief pieces into something resembling a music video. Quick, short edits, compiled into a unified whole to tell a bigger picture.
Coupled with Post It Note Poetry, another short form of writing I enjoy, I can post these experimental works here while I work on my current novella and put my novel through final edits.
I have considered compiling my Twitfic collections into a singular text, as well as collating my Post It Note Poetry into an anthology. Would anyone be interested?
A Fullness in Brevity - Adam Byatt 