In the quiet

According to my high school physics textbook, 

Sound will not travel without something to travel through.

The atmosphere, the ocean, even a wall will do.

(Such is why space is always so quiet.)

According to my high school experience,

Misery will not arrive without silence to travel through.

The evening, the morning, even the afternoon will do.

(Such is why nighttime is always so grim.)

There is something about the moment 

The entire world turns in for the night

That seems to turn something on inside me.

This is when the whispers start.

Good-for-nothing, they call.

Screw-up. Lazy. Idiot.

They build in my chest and scream silently,

Buzzing like a swarm of wasps under my skin.

They dig my nails into my palms

Grind my teeth like millstones

Make me consider quieting the cacophony

By removing the life they need to travel through.

I never did, though.

Instead, I followed the world's advice

And turned in for the night-

Turned into a thoughtless body 

Wrapped in sheets and blankets and dreams.

I turned up the volume on life,

In friends' chatter and teachers' droning,

Trucks on the pavement and birds in the trees:

The surround-sound of the universe.

Until, of course,

The next night.

(According to my high school English textbook,

Edgar Allen Poe found the beauty in pain

And the art in the melancholic. 

He lived to forty and died in the night.)