I hear silence like a dream, noisy and full of people moving about.
I hear people growing old, getting sick, moving toward death as if they were traveling to work on the subway.
Traveling together, packed tight and riding through an improbable world of concrete and steel.
Graduated to life from the same place; we travel the same route and  pass the same stops.
We stop for our first taste of hate, of love, and of loss.
Fortunate are we to travel beside another for some of the journey, enjoying a nosier sound of silence.
Painful truth is we never go the distance together.
Pieces of my life are lost forever along the way.

Silence is not about subway rides.
Silence is what you are listening to now; it is the sound of memory, the sound fear, the silent record of stations visited along the way.
It is the sound I make when I steer the ship.
The sound of my fingerprint.
Silence is the sound I make in my final moment.
The sound my father makes when he speaks to me.
It is the sound of now, the clamoring sound of our silent movie spooling from one reel to another.