The Science of Silence: An Exploration of the Absence of Sound

By Anne Rhee & Sunny Lee

In a Halloween-esque manner, this poem explores silence, ritualistic elements of insomnia, and isolation. What it means, however, is up to you to interpret.

Quilted pillows, 
rainbow palettes of blankets, 
             strewn haphazardly across the room amidst  
             domestic wreckage,

The wistful 
             eyes of a doll, 
                          the occasional 
                                       creak of a floorboard, 

                                       

Sure signs of a ghost, she was told, 

The echoes of a child’s whisper sunk in her mind, 
             she
Tried to sleep, but couldn’t. 
Tugged at the rainbow seams for security 

she waits. 

The silence, weighing on her shoulders, she longs for
Carpet

Someone in the attic? 
Her eyelids, 
                                       
A purpley-blue gossamer 
willing to blink open

She lies among the silence, 
unspoken words, 
like bricks 
Hard and heavy, 
pushing against her sleeping body

It’s a wake, they repeat, 

The night watch has just begun.



A howl in the distance. She kneels on the floor,
the hardwood planks 
pressed against her shins, 
aching, 
                                                                              



it’s become a ritual, she tells the unspoken thing (in her mind)

Utterances with the potential to
Shape or break her world. 
Like skipping stones across a stream
Like laying your head on the plush fibers of a carpet in the afternoon sun.

Confession time. 

She bends forward in a motion of devotion, 
tilts her chin down, 
             the waterlines 
                          of her lids kiss 
             the floor. 
she is once again, too close 

the unspoken words ready
             to tumble out

She braces herself for release, waiting for the words 
to sweep her off her feet,
the floorboards creaking
                                                     

under her every step.
She wonders if they will be enough for what she has been wanting to say,
what she’s been feeling,

an unspoken melody that captivates her mind,  she wonders
             will her head have a soft place to rest?

a howl in the distance, she walks back to her mattress,
             the voices, the sounds—they are 
                          Waiting. 
                          She lets out a primordial howl. 

She smiles. 
                                       

Process

One of our goals this year was to explore more hybrid forms, and Claudia Rankine’s poetry came to mind for its image-text juxtaposition. Anne and I wrote each line in real-time, playing off of each other’s words in order to complete the poem. Then, Anne used her poet sensibility to refine it a bit more. Then Sunny interspersed images to expand/echo the nuances of certain lines for extra emphasis.