That endless thrumming in my chest.  I've been told that it is my heart.  The rhythm is constant and reassuring.  My mortal timepiece.  One day it will just cease, it will probably thrum and bump around in my chest in an uneven protest at the end of it's long labor, but the sound, the thrumming will end.  I don't think about that sound most of the time, actually I believe that we all walk around oblivious to it.

When a heart breaks, the silence is deafening, but the pain is excruciating.  It is a a burning in the chest that cannot be quenched.  It feels like nothing else ever has or will.  The pain comes and goes with familiar smells;  a whiff of perfume, a familiar flower, popcorn, fresh rain through an open window, the smell of  bacon cooking,  the scent of new leather,  even a simple hand soap lathered up.   Sounds are just as relentless;  the laughter of a couple brushing by me in the crowd, a stupid TV show that used to make us laugh, those inane songs on a CD that are still in my car,  even hearing a commercial in the other room brings back a spring day as clear as HD, complete with the sounds of footsteps drawing near, and the brush of a hand on my shoulder, the greeting of a friend who has been dead for years.

No, a broken heart does not make a sound. That's why we never hear  them when we walk down a crowded street, stand in an elevator with strangers, or stand in front of a large glass window, aimlessly watching people eating and talking as we wonder about their lives for a few moments, so we can forget ours. Absent to our ears, eyes and sense of smell is the cacophany of stimulus around us that can bring others to their knees, with grief that follows all uf us like a shadow where ever we go.  You might see a broken heart flash across someone's face for a moment when grief touches them on the arm, and reminds them again of their loss.  The recovery is usually quick, a grasp of a bannister, a halting step, and the the day begins again when they remember that it is just a memory, and they brush it away from their face like a strand of errant hair.