Silence, 2024

Olena Kainska  

I have 13 egg yolks in my mouth. They have such thin and delicate shells that they are very easy to cut through with your teeth. And it is very important for me to keep them intact. I carefully roll them around in my mouth so that they don't crack or cut or spill. I take great care of them. And at the same time, I need to speak, to say words to people without damaging those yolks.

I carefully choose every word so that I don't accidentally offend, hurt, or touch some painful string in people's souls, or hurt them. I carefully select and slowly pronounce the words so that I don't inadvertently say something wrong, something offensive or unnecessary, or something that this person doesn't want to hear right now. I check and weigh every word before I say it. I carefully select each word, rolling it around in my mouth like a delicate egg yolk before releasing it from my mouth with a sound.

And it's such a big effort, such a strain, such hard work that my jaws are already hurting. The pain from the jaw joint is transmitted to the temples, face, and ears. This tension is experienced as physical pain.

And yet, no matter how hard I try, people are offended by me. I am always failing to please them in some way, failing to meet their needs, failing to say what they want. And I'm so clumsy in my communication that people turn away from me, shame me, discuss me behind my back, and ridicule me.

It hurts me, but for a long time, for many, many years, I have not been able to cry. It's as if my jaw is crying with this pain. Those tears come out sideways. That pain and shame clench my jaw and crumble my teeth at night when I sleep. I wake up in pain and rub my jaw with my hands.

I would really like to spit out all those egg yolks into an old bowl and give them to the yard dogs. I would like to scream out all the tension and pain and resentment and scream and scream and scream, curse very loudly, stomp my feet and push and shove and swear, and maybe even pound my fists on the table and on the walls so that the plaster falls from the ceiling and the chandelier rings, and the birds fall from the roof.

But I am silent. My trauma is inside my silence. My trauma is my egg yolk. And around it, there is still a white. And around it, there is still a shell. And around it is a whole chicken. And that chicken ran away long ago.