In this World of Dissonance

"The world is everything," he said. "And the earth can take it away."

No one was quite sure how it happened. At first we thought. " it must be our phones." But then people without phones said, "no." There was talk of aliens and terrorists for a while but no one showed up from out there, no one from over there. People continued to talk, lips moved, just habit I guess. There was widespread speculation that other creatures such as dogs and whales were unaffected. Someone was looking into that. But the upshot of it all was that not a single human being on the planet could hear. The transmission of sound had ceased. We thought of exposure but new borns smiled and gurgled when that dictionary hit the floor. The truth was we had been turned off. For a while closed caption was the rage, then signing. Subtitles flew off the shelves.   But eventually we realized that it just wasn't the same. Nothing would ever be the same. "Thank god we have texting and the internet." tapped many of us. But in this world of silence a great longing pushed us past our technology. We became exquisite monitors of motion. We began to notice. We began to share ourselves because there was less and less between us. We stopped flying and mass transit became massively entertaining because we wanted to be close. We walked and felt and paid attention. Instead of movies we began to watch each other. We stopped for clouds and storms moving in. We became vigilant. We saw things that the sun did, and at night, things the moon did. And we stayed close. Close enough to remember touch, close enough to hold each other's faces in our hands when we wanted to express something. And when it finally dawned on us that the world was holding our faces in its hands, a morning came when we heard a jay call, the wind rustle a curtain, and voices through our very breaths.