quiet/loud

Kyla Guimaraes, United States

After Brigit Pegeen Kelly

coming from the city, suburbs: quiet

but in time, suburbs: loud. in a body sped up, eardrums slowly adjust, undulating between the

muffled and the vulnerable. in the gaps between breaths there is the thickening buzz of

mosquitoes and pale drape of sunset over pavement. these gaps can only be seen with the lights off;

in the city, not even the stars are visible, grids of windows immortalized a drowsy

yellow-gradient.

the world becomes louder when there is contrast. family/stranger. night/day.

attacker/attacked. double-beating hearts hide in the underbrush. warm, humid air pools like an

A/C unit, over the body, the mind. skin bruises more easily. dead/alive. the carcass of a dead doe

lays splayed across the side of the road, belly undone by the gaze of passing cars’ high-beam

headlights. from between the stillness of her intestines erupts the sounds of the wings of a

thousand honeybees: a rising hum bellowed by their fattened bodies, forewings flapping

aimlessly against the wind.

love/hate. mother/daughter. father/son. here, loving feels more violent.

bloody knuckles become interspersed through dry plots of land. corn plants reach over 6 ft in

height and immediately die off, leaves slowly yellowing. time bleeds through moth-bitten cotton

tee-shirts, landing in the baggy face of an IV drip, the gaping mouth of a plastic bag. rats are

found impaled on barbed wire fences. the night goes unweaned, the stars spinning out of control,

drunk empty by the child’s hungry mouth.

boy/girl. past/present. slow/fast. nuclear families

implode like nuclear weapons, like a neutron fired at an unstable uranium atom, radioactive

waste spilling across teeth, carbon turned killer. police are called to house parties. long stretches

of highway are overtaken by a cornucopia of roadkill. the shattered green glass of beer bottles is

discarded in the dying grass outside the local public library. calls go to voicemail immediately:

leave a message at the tone. wasp nests gather out in the woodshed, bodies crawling over the

rotting logs, stingers elevated. bug bites turn red and swollen. the screech of car tires on

pavement echoes, elongated. morning echoes into night.

faces blur together. the body slows

down, and then speeds right back up, the pulse echoing unnaturally when surrounded by nature.

natural/man-made. symbiocene/anthropocene. first comes the velocitization of sound, and then the

gradual adjustment as the car curls around the exit ramp and the speedometer drops.

its engine hums: quiet/loud.

Kyla Guimaraes is a a writer and high school student from New York City. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming for The Penn Review, the Aurora Journal, and The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, among others. In addition to writing, she loves playing basketball, socks with fun patterns, and knock-knock jokes.