He gets home

and locks the front door

Confronted by a sound

so deafening, so loud

Its noise goes in one ear

and out the other

A hissing sound with a frequency

as devastating as the fear

 of being eaten alive

by white noise

He sits there and imagines

she is in the other room

Even though they often spent evenings

in separate rooms,

they were together

She could hear TV football matches from his bedroom

He could hear her watching travel documentaries

And now he hears a sound

as loud as him shouting ‘GOAL!’ or ‘FOWL!’

There is no sound as loud as silence.

 

Empty space now filled by

the sound of memories on full volume

And so, he sits with his memories and to kill the silence,

listens to music that he used to listen to with Mum

just to imagine that she’s in the room

And just like Mum used to do,

just before he goes to bed,

he puts Edward and Rosa-Belle to bed,

on the armchair where Mum used to sit

He places them face to face, puts her red cardigan over them

like a blanket, and then turns off the light

He closes the door and then retires to his bedroom for the night

The silence is punctured in the living room

by the bears saying to each other out loud,

‘Goodnight. Love you’.