Sound of Silence

I found myself at that cobble stone corner again, waiting. Waiting in the mist of the early hours of the day; a day still blanketed with darkness. A city still asleep.
Under the dim halo of a streetlight I stood, the light cushoining me from the penetrating night. The soft, wispy cocoon of light shielded me from the cold that I also turned the collar of my damp jacket up against. I was alone, and waiting in uncertainty, but I was not afraid. For my greatest protection from the dark was the sound of silence.
Silence that muffled any approaching sound; the murmurs of the night. Silence that made me feel like the thin halo of light of light around me was truly a haven that I was encased in. I could feel the silence fill my lungs as the fog made the air thick to breathe. Like molasses, the silence seeped through me.

Suddenly, from far away i heard a dull roar, growing louder, and growing closer. i turned my head and there I saw it, a giant mechanical monster, careening and screeching and growling and spitting out fumes as it barreled down the street towards me. The beams it's blazing, neon-tinged eyes engulfed the soft light around me and blinded me. i staggered back, clutching my burning eyes, but as soon as it came it left. I remained back, eyes still squeezed closed, waiting until the beast's roar had faded away.
I blinked my stinging eyes back into focus. and when I had regained my composure, the street corner looked the same, but at the same time I sensed something was completely wrong: the silence had been pierced. It was gone. My protector had departed, and suddenly, I was afraid. I had to go on.

I wandered through the empty streets, and I was alone. The cold had now seeped through my jacket and my shoes, and a shiver ran through me. The jagged shadows leaped at me, slithering around the sides of the streets, always... Watching me. i walked on, into the heart of the city, where a new day was stirring. Neon began cropping up everywhere, illuminating faces I had never seen before. Blank faces that only existed if only for a moment in my mind's eye. I dissapeared just as quickly in their eyes.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more

Their mouths were moving but I could not hear them. They saw one another in the reflected neon light, but did not notice each other. Some were stranded on street sides, singing songs and trying to catch the eyes and ears of people who would never listen. Feeble melodies that the world would not stop to hear, melodies lost in the blurring buzz of people, mixed with the roar of machines. And I did not open my mouth, for fear that the silence I held inside would be lost in the fray. My own songs of silence would only be fading echoes in the waking night. But even I bore that neon stain, from when that monster blinded me on the corner. Perhaps the thing I'd been waiting for was the losing silence that i too had lost.

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made

The gazes of the people were trained ahead, constantly searching for something to hold on to. i saw a flickering gase go skyward, but they turned away before they could see. I, too, had not yet let let my eyes glance skyward, for fear that what I saw there would leave me cold. The only thing I wanted to see was misty, warm light, and the only thing I'd let my ears be filled with was the sound of silence.

Suddenly, in a fleeting moment of peace in which I closed my burning eyes, I heard. A whisper. Lower than any uttered secret. A warning.

"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls"

I wandered towards those crumbling walls, led by a promise, a hope. But all I saw was crumbling paint, peeling off the walls of old. Some were artful, some seemed hasty, but they were all being chipped away, eroded by time and a rushing humans. Most were sprung from youthful adrenaline, plastering a name in hopes it would stick, but some were pictures, poems, messages, all desperately wishing to be heard. The words of the prophets, and perhaps the answers, were being weathered and worn away. A splash of silence, a snippet of sage, all battered and bruised by time, and the neon signs that smothered them.