Editor’s note: The following piece is the winning article from our Reading Week article contest.

By Emilia Malpica-Iruegas — Contributor

This reading week, I stole my voice from a grave. 

This reading week, I took the time to care for a battered heart I had left on read months ago, and put the static noises that had been haunting my earphones on mute.

I woke up to the sunlight warming my bed from an open window, and listening to geese coming back from voyages far away.

I put on kettles and kettles of black seeds and herbs, feeling the dried leaves between my fingers. I poured the liquid gold in cups and glasses I had long forgotten, enjoying their textures and colours dancing under the light of my lamp.

I drank a million cups of tea, all simmered with both love and pain. 

I put on my clothes like I never had before, one sock at a time, one pull at a time, one tug at a time, feeling all the textures.

I put on my boots, and I took walks, again and again. 

And again.

I walked around the forest behind our school.

I stepped over crunchy snow, listening to it crack and squeak under my shoes. I looked for rays of sunshine, and basked under their glory for as long as I could before my fingers went numb. 

I looked at my breath dance and ran in the arctic cold, and I wondered why I had never thought of using it before.

Why I have never said what I meant or meant what I said. Why I kept such breath and such life to myself when my inner world is so rich, and full.

Why I have never sung in public.

Or jeered, or yelled, or even raised my voice.

Everyday that I came back, the silence seemed more oppressive. The silence I had enjoyed at the beginning of break, bringing peace and calm, now seemed taunting. 

If the birds outside could sing, why couldn’t I? 

Everyday when I went back for a walk, I built up my courage. 

At first, I whispered, to the trees, to the wind. 

Then I talked.

I let out stories and legends into the ears of the leaves and forest creatures around me. 

For the first time in my life, I shared the sounds of my heart without restraint. 

Eventually, I was speaking full sentences, loud. Louder than the snow falling, or the wind blowing.

And then one day, 

I 

Just 

Screamed.

I took all the pain and anger that was in my heart, and I screamed. 

I held my own hand in the cold, knees on the wet dirt road that constitutes the path, and I screamed. I grabbed the snow in my hands, as delicate as I felt, and saw it crumble – just like I once did.

I grabbed on to that snow and that ice as my heart bled out, and I promised myself never again. 

Never again would I bury my voice in a grave for the world to discover after my passing. Never again would I have to steal my long-lost voice from a grave I dug. Never again would I hide it under rubble and dirt.