Marlie Monologue

Silence

Walking out into my relative's living room, the hushed laughter and conversation died away as my face came into view. Margie smiled, laying out my breakfast choices before retreating to the study, while Paul sat with his back towards me reading the newspaper. All that was heard was the clinking of my spoon and the occasional rustle of the newspaper, the tension quickly becoming so great that the walls might crack and the windows threatened to shatter. As the others woke from their sleep, the house became louder, filling with with the chaos and noise that always seems to follow my family. Still, my uncle sat, silent, preoccupied by today's biggest story. The quiet nature of my uncle threatened me constantly. We were family, but

Hopefully it will rain, the plants need it. We need all the rain we can get now. It has been a dry summer, too dry. Yes it has been, i would reply, unable to get into the even dryer conversation.

I took to avoiding him by busying myself by drawing pictures or talking to my brother. The endless energy that filled me was forced to stay pent up while visiting, making me long for an escape. Everything in the house seemed so fragile, from the dusty glass kaleidoscopes my brother and I would have to dodge and weave around, to the delicate masks that seemed as though they would fall with a single tap against the wall. Even the yellowing book collections my uncle stored away were breakable, the musty pages on the verge of tearing with every turn. The house was a museum, and I hated

Instinctively, we prepared to travel in an attempt to somehow help him, yet my uncle stopped us. Wanting to spend his last months with his wife, we were forced to retreat. Relief flooded my mind as I told myself that it was a good thing we don't have to see him. Trying to fit all the conversations that we could have had over the years into a few days wouldn't be worth it, and Paul knew this. All my life, I had only known my uncle to be calm, the one who almost always preferred to sit in silence. The illness brought a wave of frustration that my uncle could no longer hold back. After forgetting how to login to his computer, rage fueled Paul to throw the monitor across the room, shattering the screen and his love for computers along with