ON A DAY LIKE THIS

Noise has never been my thing, and then there are days when it gets too noisy, the loud creeping
into the safe, waving its razor-sharp blades and I’m afraid I don’t know anything about self-
defense against a knife to the throat. Some people are just loud. It’s awkward when you’re not
and are forced to live in a tantrum house. Sometimes I fear the volume will affect my hearing. (I
wonder what the damage sounds like.) I thought once, maybe the house I’m in is not a place
where loud should live and shhhh’ed the noise but only seemed to have killed the fun. I’m
looking at my life at the breakfast table, wishing I could step away for a moment and say I’ll be
right back between melting butter and cold cuts, you guys are doing great without me, and just
leave to listen to the noisy wind in the pines. But I know choking is a hazard at a table, and I stay.

Serbia-born and Germany-based, Bojana Stojcic has her prose and poetry published in many lit journals, including Rust + Moth, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Barren Magazine, and most recently in Punk Noir Magazine, Brave Voices Magazine, and Versification. She loves working in silence, but knows there’s no louder noise than that of a heartbeat.