Illiterate

     The world appeared to him like the pages of a book, flipping endlessly before his eyes, a black and white blur of letters and shapes and symbols that he couldn’t wrap his head around.  He hadn’t yet learned to read, and so what he experienced in his illiteracy was a mere whirring and flapping of papers, on and on and on.  It never struck him that something could be eluding him, though he wondered where the colorful illustrations from his childhood had suddenly gone.  And so he went about his business, wandering great expanses of time, advancing from school to college to work, without questioning the muffled hush, the muteness that was his world. 

He lived in a city of millions, but the walls of his apartment kept them out.  His ears hung out with humanity when sounds trickled in through his windows in the night and poured in during the mornings.  The honking and screeching, the blaring of police cars, the wailing of ambulances and fire trucks—it never let up.  His friends lived such troubled lives, he thought.  He only heard from them when they were busy being cut off in traffic, getting arrested, becoming deathly sick or lighting their houses on fire.