Quiet Anger

Negar Morshedian

It’s interesting: I can’t shout anymore. 

It used to come very easily— sulfur deposits in a bubbling, hissing volcano, rising and raising my voice with them. The shocking, radiant blue that fools your too-vulnerable-to-meaningless-symbolism mind and stings you with its unexpected heat. 

(“You were supposed to be cold and soothing like water.”

Bold of you to assume that any part of me is life-giving. No: the rule is that you give and I consume.)

I didn’t even notice it happening. The years went by and my throat closed up slowly, the vocal cords growing dull like rosin-caked strings that are well past saving but you stubbornly refuse to throw out because you’ve got a cloth and some light scraping will set them to rights again. Well, here I am throwing them out at last: I can’t shout anymore. 

And now comes the part you’re expecting: I tell you that I took my rage and turned it into something beautiful, expressing it with art and passion and giving it meaning like a photographer positioning a subject’s limbs so they seem striking in the unique angle of the light. It’s a very appealing narrative. It’s also utter bullshit. I am not here to inspire you, and I don’t care about you enough to lie.

I can’t shout anymore, so I carry the anger with me instead. Its multitudes are there with me as I drag my little suitcase of no-good down the hallway of life again and again, day by day. 

The indignation I swallow tries to climb to the top of my throat at times, but I’m used to the crawling sensation. You tell me to spit it out, but I smile and swallow it again discreetly. It is the raised fist that I gently hold and bring down, the blazing light of rebellion that flickers with a mention of reward because in reality, it is still a child. 

Shame is much more tame than indignation: it runs and hides behind my legs, and I have to pick up the little one and let it hang tight to my shoulders. It can be very vicious when it wants to, but we are familiar now, so I don’t really have a choice but to heft up the heavy little burden. 

Wrath likes to seize up my limbs, brittle and tense and expecting disaster, but so far I’ve accomplished a small victory of relocating it from the thrumming blood in my veins to the tears that form in my eyes in every argument. It’s humiliating, but it’s better than having to deal with regret afterwards. 

All of these combine to form anger, my old companion, my black umbrella underneath the abnormally bright and hot sun. I’ll wait a while to let it do its work before I go into the shade again.