The footsteps entered my subconsciousness long before the head in my doorway entered my consciousness.
I think he had been standing there a while. My eyes felt glued to the screens, making sense of endless words and numbers. When I did look up, I knew I wasn’t really seeing him yet. I tilted my head, hoping to get the words on the screen, the thoughts in my head, the music in my mind, to leak out my ear a little.
It probably looked to him like i was contemplating him. He tilted his head to comtemplate me back. I smiled. He was one of the good ones. I could probably fudge this a little.
“You Okay?” he asked.
“yeah.. just.. umm..” and for just a moment, I debated telling him.
Telling him about the upgrades that weren’t running right, that I had to go back and fixed, and wondered how many times in the past hadn’t gone right, and how far back I would have to go to find out.
Telling him about the idea that I had to fix an object in a database, it’s process, and how it had seemed like a great idea, but it wasn’t working right, and I hadn’t had the time to figure out why, although I had spent at least an hour on it. Though that hour was 3 days ago, and I’m not sure I remember now what I was doing.
Telling him of the song stuck in my head, the beat that twirled through my head like a hurricane, making me feel dizzy, drunk, and some part of me didn’t want to be pulled out of it.
Regaling him of stories of ghosts and gods that play around in my head, words not yet put to paper, but events that are building themselves together into their own little world, worlds, universes really.
And, for anther instant, debated pulling away, turning back to the words in the tiny screen on my desk, the one with no scripts or problems, but instead held it’s own world. The one of shadows and light, caresses and heartache, imagination and superheroes and emotions so strong I knew even as I looked at him, that I was someone else completely when I turned my eyes that way.
And I looked at him, all of it growing..
and then I blinked. And smiled as I realized he was waiting for me to answer.
“Yeah, I’ve just been a little overwhelmed.”
And he smiled back, and we discussed fixing a single word that would cascade changes across a million places.
Because, unlike silences, words can do that, you know.
Nope, silences only change you.