What is in the Quiet

When I was little, I hated the quiet. It was all that was bad and failed in me. Loneliness, ill-manners, an unkept room - these were the stallions that guarded the doors to the quiet. I was bad and the quiet was bad too.

Later quiet befriended me in different places, more intimate and even still darker than before and I came to respect its hold on me and on others. That quiet does not, itself, quiet. It remains even in the most silent moments, an unheard scream but shrill and binding nonetheless.

Now there is quiet and I smile when it arrives. Not the welcome smile of a friend long-lost, but the knowing smile of a companion, for better or worse.

Here you are: quiet that rests and that which stills the mind so one can think beside the noise. Quiet that is peace and completion,
and still more noble quiet that is solemn, reverent. Fierce or flawed there is quiet in me and I can bring quiet to a moment, I can be the stallion at the door.  Simmer, burn, or retreat.

I smile because I know what is in the quiet.