All The Roads That Lead To Us

If walls could talk, we’d speak of ‘them’. If walls could talk, we’d tell of ‘us’.

The lights lived on as we kept vigil. Sometimes they would come, more often than not, they would go. But, always the lights lived on. Where were they now? Never here, always there. Their songs that filled our roads, their laughter that came and went. Never here, always there. Music from a piano, sometimes. Down our road and shared between us. I would find it last. Sometimes, it would stay, more often than not it would go. I listened and I searched.

Time was still as we. A small sound, escaping under wood, none of us sure what it was. Laughter we knew and sadness too. A small sound from something that didn’t know either yet. The small sound grew and found both laughter and sadness too. It would visit from time to time and the lights lived on.

Then there was the quiet. It would begin to visit and rarely leave. Like a cold blanket, it would wrap itself around us and journey down our roads and we would begin to hope for laughter and maybe sadness too. Though we lived together, our words we never spoke. They only ever came to us when the quiet left, whistling down our roads. Sometimes, the words were sweet, like a smell from window’s spring, and other times they were something strange, like silence built too long. We waited for them to visit, sweet and strange, we waited for something to see. The lights lived on and we slept none.

We knew of time, we’d heard its voice echoing amongst us. We’d seen its lines coming between us. The words that lived inside us, yet none of us could speak, cursed time. Time and time again. Even window’s offerings wore thin, like paper spread too scarce. Then, they would return and the cold blanket would turn warm. The curses on time would lift and the piano would sing yet again.

When the dying sun would kiss us as it pierced through window’s summer, the words in us grew warmer. The ‘always there’ voices that grew louder as the sun drew lower, collided across the boards and into our world through the gaps that connected us. Our words grew warmer. As window’s night descended and birds visited window’s morning, we waited for another day like the one before. One more we hoped, one more, one more. The arrival of new voices, sweet and strange as they came. Blended with the ones we knew, they whispered and sang. A symphony of sound and feeling, just out of reach. For it to be here and not there, just once, and then one more, one more. For it to kiss us as we waited with time. Time and time again. For our words to be spoken and heard, and the lights to be finally dimmed. Though we could not sleep, we could hope, and hope brought chance. When the voices came near, chance and hope came with it. Then the voices would fade. Like sun and skin they would fade, retreating into the silence that lived amongst us, and there we would wait.

There we would listen as they breathed life down our roads. We stood and kept vigil, hoping to see. The lights lived on, yet we could never see. All the songs and sounds we heard, but their faces we never knew.

We kept vigil and we hoped. We hoped for someone to reach us for we could not reach and the words that lived inside us hoped for nothing and everything more.