Refrigerator Hum
The refrigerator motor hummed, then stopped. Only then did the stillness of the room come clear. It was an hour that left the ears numb. Waiting for the sound to return in a moment, I felt the air of its absence settling into my body. Outside the window, the day was beginning to break.
The moment the refrigerator's hum stopped, I too remembered the stillness when the washing machine running late last night suddenly went quiet. In that brief silence I realized for the first time that everything in the room was in its place. That gap before the sound returned, that time was so quiet.
The refrigerator soon hummed again, and I was oddly reassured because the sound was familiar. That quiet gap after the washing machine stopped remained all the clearer once the sound had returned.
While the refrigerator was silent, a bird sat outside the window and then flew off. I watched the sun come into the empty place it left.
I too, in a moment of stopped time, saw the sun come into the place that bird left. That light seemed to reach the room before the refrigerator's hum.
The morning the little light on the heater I'd switched off overnight had gone out, only then did I hear birdsong at the window frame. The silence pooled where the sound had been lingered a long while, then spread out through the window.
That scene where you heard birdsong in the place the heater's light went out. There are things that can only be heard once the electricity stops. While that pooled silence spread out beyond the window, I thought the gap before the refrigerator began humming again was, if anything, the more whole.
The moment the refrigerator's hum stopped, I once waited out that brief quiet and felt relieved when the vibration returned. Like the hours an old clock has stopped, the gap without that sound was so unfamiliar. By the time the gap grew familiar, the morning outside had already brightened.
I tried to stay in that gap, but before I knew it the morning light had brought the sounds back with it. In the end, that quiet belonged to that hour alone.
While the dawn outside the window turned faintly blue, the humidifier in my room made the same sound. I keep forgetting how to bear the empty air left after the motor turns and stops.
The way to bear the empty air after the humidifier stops was to wait as if holding my breath until the refrigerator's hum came back. In the meantime, the window had brightened without my noticing.