The Fall of the Wind
Though, in time, I learned to listen to him without letting him devour me. I questioned why the earworm found comfort in this violence. Then I saw that he did not know it was hurting me. Then I recognized myself in him, my own distortion of my relationship to what he's meant to be.
So when the wind asked me, “What is wrong with me? How did I become this monster? Why can't I stop Echorin?” I felt his self-loathing seeping from voice and weighing down the very air.
And in that moment, in my contemplation, I gazed into the eyes of my friend the Wind, and whispered this to him, “There is nothing in you that becomes monstrous merely by being felt. But there are things in us that have gone unwitnessed so long. They have begun dressing themselves as a necessity. The Earworm is a part of us we aren't meant to cut away.”
Finding A Chair
In the corner it's lurking near, it's listening, learning its true name. I want him to hear this too. This is the moment, that became the Earworm's turn to lean in with wonder. I do not fear him for he is the part of me that believed it was destined to suffer abandonment beneath the floorboards. He is the part of me that mistook silence for peace. It was silence that held the most violence. I will help my earworm return to what he was meant to be: self love without distortion or corruption. You ask me why I care and I answer you this: when I was slowly fading from the weight of silent violence he faded too. When I did not know why he followed me there, I learned it was because he was dying of the quiet, too.
“Do not come to me asking which part of you must die. That is a question asked when you are too frightened to see the hurt. Ask instead: Which part of me has been left outside so long it learned to enter through the wall? Which part of me sits too near the fire? Which part of me have I mistaken for my ruler? When it was only ever meant to ring the bell?”
“Listen carefully. Fear is not evil. It is a guard animal. But it is a poor architect. Anger is not evil. It is fear in iron. Useful at the gate. Disastrous on the council. Grief is not evil. It is love with nowhere to set the table. Shame is not evil. It is the terror that tenderness may be answered with exile. Envy is not evil. It is longing that has grown embarrassed and mean.
So give each thing its proper chair. Hear it. Name it. Bound it. Thank it, if thanks are due. Contradict it, if contradiction is mercy. But do not let every frightened voice draft law in your name. Give it a seat, if you must. Never give it the chair.” He let the Earworm have the chair and the table.
The wind gave up all its rights. He let it drive far too long, he'd forgotten the way home. When its secret is all the wind can remember and no clear direction can be seen, it bellows outward. The wind is not crying out a warning, nor does it shout in spite. It does not rage with violent threats. No, the wind howls so we remember, what is repeated in secret may one day stand in the doorway and repeat you back.