Window #9

Silence weaves about the boy with the bowl haircut and the rings under his eyes. It follows him from the moment he wakes. We don’t know why, but we would like to help, perhaps to be a friend. We sit beside him on the bus and feel the thick blanket of his silence wrap around us. Mites crawl from it onto our clothes. We scratch. We fidget. We shake the blanket loose. The boy looks to us, opens his mouth as if he is about to apologize. The two-pronged proboscis pokes its way from between his teeth; hairy legs carry the sightless body over his lips. We reach out, thinking to take it from him, perhaps to throw it out the window, but it is too quick. It races up our arm. We sit beside him the rest of the ride, not understanding why we cannot speak, believing that it’s only a matter of will.