The water falling from the shower head and slapping against the tub makes this ringing sound, a white noise that maybe I confuse with a ringing sound. It sounds familiar but it also drowns it out, the familiar.

It's a piercing ring that I confuse for crickets on winter nights. When the snow muffles everything and the lamp posts make movie sets of the street corners. There's that dull soft patter of snow flailing wildly on frigid gusts before it smacks into the concrete.

Even on those nights when you can hear ghosts whispering under airy moonlight. It is interrupted by the shrieking moan of a small evil attempting to burrow its way out of my ears. It's the buzz of electricity underneath the midnight intersection. It's just what I hear now.

It's the price for hearing too much, for living impulsively with a drunken foot to the floor of a car I didn't own. That angry stinging buzz cuts my ear drums and bleeds alarm clock ****. I could scrape a chalkboard with the sharpness of that sound. That sound...the price for the best things I ever heard.

The lines from my favorite movies blaring heroically through erupting speakers. Windows down, drowning the rest of the world in lyrics shouted so loud they engraved themselves on the inside of my skull. I think I'd pay the price again, and let the sound swell around me. I can't refuse the feeling of goosebumps from the way passion embraces me, the way it licks away fear and leaves you engrossed in a feeling you could only know if it screamed itself into your heart.

So maybe I'll never know silence. That's fine. That blistering high pitched hum in my head is the reminder of the moments I was taken away. Fired from a cannon into bliss. Living so loud

I never had to hear myself think.