White Noise

Do not leave the radio
between stations.

It learns your breathing there.

At first,
it is only the ordinary hiss
dry as old bones,
soft as dead leaves
dragged across concrete.
The kind of sound
your mind politely ignores,
filing it away
with refrigerator hums
and distant highways.

That is how it enters.

Not all at once,
but grain by grain,
until the silence in your house
is no longer yours.

Listen.

Beneath the static,
there is another rhythm.

Not music.

Teeth.

Thousands of them,
chattering somewhere
just beyond the edge
of human hearing,
wearing themselves down
trying to become words.

You tell yourself
it almost sounded
like your name.

The second night,
the television wakes
without asking.

The screen blossoms
into white snowfall,
each bright fleck
an open eye
blinking far too slowly.

The speakers breathe.

Not a recording.
Not a voice.

A room
trying to inhale you.

You pull the plug.

The sound continues.

Now it comes
from inside the walls,
where the insulation rustles
like people turning over
in shallow graves.
It follows the pipes,
fills the vents,
settles behind photographs,
waiting for darkness
to remove the last distractions.

Sleep becomes impossible.

Every time your heartbeat slows,
the static grows louder,
threading itself
between your thoughts
until you cannot remember
whether you are hearing it

or thinking it.

One morning,
you discover
your dreams
have acquired
that same familiar hiss.

Everyone in them
speaks through interference.

Their mouths move,
their faces tremble,
but every sentence
arrives shredded,
as though something
is chewing
on the signal.

You stop answering
the phone.

You stop opening
the curtains.

Outside,
power lines sag
under invisible weight,
singing to themselves
in voices too low
for anyone
except the lonely.

Especially the lonely.

They say
every sound
ever made
continues forever,
traveling outward
through the universe.

If that is true,

then somewhere
between the stars
is every scream
that was never heard.

Every final prayer
smothered by concrete.

Every child
who whispered,
"There's someone
in the static."

Perhaps
it is only distance
that makes them sound alike.

Or perhaps
the static
is not interference at all.

Perhaps it is a crowd

millions of forgotten mouths
speaking at once,

wearing away
the thin membrane
between their world
and yours,

waiting patiently
for you to mistake

their answer

for silence.