Poetic response to the “Contradictions” prompt:
Deafening Silence
Deafening silence,
thick as storm clouds
yet empty as air.
It settles in rooms
like dust on forgotten shelves.
No scream, no whisper,
yet louder than a war drum,
it pounds in the chest
where echoes of thought refuse to rest.
Stillness speaks.
But what it says,
only the aching know.
The piece grew out of a quiet morning where the stillness around me felt anything but peaceful. I found myself thinking about how silence—something we often link with calm—can actually carry tension, memory, even grief. That contradiction became the thread I pulled on.
The line “louder than a war drum” came early and stayed. It helped shape the rest of the poem, pushing me to explore how something invisible can still feel dense, how absence can speak volumes. What I ended up with was a meditation on emotional noise, and how we carry it even in the quietest moments.
Chukwuemeka Ofordile is a Nigerian poet and public servant. His writing reflects on silence, identity, and the quiet struggles of daily life. Most of his recent work has grown out of long periods of solitude and introspection.
The Zingara Project 