This Way to The Music
Orchestrating my way out
There was only darkness. Well, mostly. Sometimes light seeped through I could almost count the fingers on my hands.
With the light, sometimes I could hear music, muffled and far away. I liked it, it sounded nice. I wonder what it would feel like to hear it clearly, without anything separating me from the brightness of the tunes. Maybe someday.
Sometimes I could hear people too. Some loud and animated, and some soft as if whispering. Some sounded like sobs so deep and thick they shook me in my marrow.
But the laughter, they were my favorite. The sweetest strings of melodies, brought up and down and up again in perfect harmony. I never minded being shaken by them.
The same sweet tone sometimes spoke to me. Telling me I’m beautiful, even though they couldn’t see me. Saying I had to be good, and I had to be kind.
If I were those things, maybe they’d let me out.
I wanted to leave, but I didn’t know how. I thought someone would come and get me. I thought someone would bring me out to the light and the music and the laughter. But nobody ever did.
Until one day, the sobs and laughter were getting louder and louder. It felt like the walls were getting thinner and thinner, or the door was getting bigger and bigger. It was hard to tell. My eyes were blurry, I couldn’t tell which way was up.
Get Nirinda Niatiansya’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Sobs and laughter and other sounds I’ve never heard turned into an unintelligible, incantation-like cacophony. Supposed spells and chants, guiding me to my exit. More and more light seeped through. Am I allowed to come out now?
Then the light dazzled to an almost unbearable flash, and without knowing why, I cried and cried and cried and cried.
And then it was me, and the same sweet song, dripping in gold, glittering more vividly than ever before.
No walls between us.
“Welcome to the world, my love. I’m your Mama.”
Nirinda Niatiansya is a writer from Jakarta, Indonesia. If you enjoyed this story, find more from Nirinda here:
