LJ Idol Week 4 entry

It is silence now, the silence after another question. The teacher reads from a stack of thick cards and the answers come in from different corners of the classroom. My hands in the pockets of my jeans, I hypnotize the irregular lines of wood on my table.

“The capital of Nicaragua?” The answer of the question is in my head and yet, I remain in this silence, I remain a part of it.
Managua. The water and the rain and a hand on wood. As long as I keep my lips closed, there will be peace. For if I don’t, tiny drops of laughter will start to fall and form a rushing wave in my ears. It comes and it goes with my words, this laughter, that grows from an invisible poisonous cloud.

So I wait, for someone else’s words, someone else’s answers, that are not followed by the cloud’s wet watering drips and the cutting painful flashes of public shame. My silence is my precautionary umbrella.

“Nobody, really?” the teacher exclaims. I take a breath, hearing the murmuring behind my back. A town, maybe, so I think, where people laugh a whole hearted laughter that is nourished by rays of sun and salt crusts on lower ends of high rising palmtrees. For when they laugh, it dries away the deadly quicksand that is not to be distinguished from the safe white sand of the beaches near the sea.

“Managua”. I speak, then hold my breath, again, under the gaze of roughly 20 pairs of eyes. Managua. And there is silence.

Still.