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People say I overindulge in three vices: coffee, cigarettes, & soda. I'm told to drink water, but I’m a little scared of it -- I can't even swim. Growing up, my mom only drank Diet Coke or coffee. No one ever taught me how to drink anything else. What was the point of washing down a meal with a beverage that just tasted like your own mouth?

I’m often challenged to keep only one of these bad habits & give up the other two. I've never committed, but if I had to, I'd only keep soda. Soda has the best branding in the world. Think about Santa, chubby, rosy-red, jolly as hell, chilling on the north pole with big fuzzy white bears, & his humble factory tucked away atop a snowy mountain. He was a caricature created for a Coca-Cola ad campaign.

& what's better than a Coke on Christmas? or a Sprite after pick-up basketball on a hot summer day? (& what's worse than Kendall Jenner giving Pepsi to cops?) It's so easy to believe that an icy bottle of high-fructose corn syrup is thirst-quenching or refreshing.

Sound is part of that brand. The toast of a glass bottle mirroring a collision of ice cubes, or the snap of a can, the rising of bubbles that could not wait to breathe air & join the drinker's lips, & that involuntary ahhhhhhhhhh once the first sip is taken. Other than the sugar & taste & caffeine, that’s the biggest draw.

In comparison, coffee is boring. Perhaps you'll hear a rolling boil & a gentle pour if you're making it at home -- but if you just buy it, all you hear are your sips. Cigarettes can be nice, especially if you have a zippo. You hear the clink, the paper & crushed tobacco drinking in the flame, & all your breaths, getting more & more desperate with each pull.

But these are circumstantial noises, dependent on how the vice is consumed. Soda has no such limitations. In every apparatus it's served in & every way it's drunk, it conducts itself an orchestra.

Why am I so fixated on noise? Because I hate silence. Psychologically, it’s not kind to me. Modern media portrayals of my particular genre of mental illness often show a worn-down human — distressed, rugged — hearing a voice, shouting commands to hurt oneself to the point of finality. My everyday experience is usually not this blatant. On most occasions, it’s just the feeling stewed into urge.

Ironically, I work in community mental health. I went to school for it & everything. I’ve been doing this for 5 years & it’s a wonder I’ve made this this far. I kinda just try to give young people a space to spill their feelings & try to connect them to whatever safe resources are available. Sometimes, I get to yell at the government for not providing more or having better resources. It's a far from perfect system, but I try my best to act in-service & minimize harm.

But do not mistake myself or anyone else in the profession for an altruist. We all get something out of it -- a paycheck, for starters. Me, I need to feel useful. It’s the only time I don’t hear the silence.

Outside of work, I mutter to myself until I can create enough rhythm to get through an encounter & on the rare occasion I achieve comfort, I become the loudest voice in any room, so I can sustain myself on the echoes.

I imagine anyone who experiences similar issues has a hard time, but I find it particularly annoying as someone who likes to write poetry & wishes to grow more in doing so. Every craft book begs the poet-in-training to learn observation. To be a still observer in their universe & develop words to translate those experiences for the reader. This had always escaped me. To sit with the world was to listen to it, but the world has never spoken loud enough to stop me from me.

Because how could it? Give me a minute of silence & I want to run into traffic. You can tell me to close my eyes & breathe, but it won't be loud enough to distract me from images of giant terrifying bug monsters, or my family being murdered before my eyes -- or my family being murdered by terrifying giant bug monsters. Imagination is cruel, egged on by anxiety & mania.

So, I champion my sodas because the flatline of water does nothing for the ups or downs. I probably should should quit smoking though, put less sugar in my coffee, maybe try decaf. I have enough unhealthy habits as is & my diet is certainly doing its fair share of damage to my respiratory system. Food is another lovely coping skill, another audible production masked as consumption.

My favorite meal is the nosiest one. Chicharrónes: perfectly crispy little friends, the crackle of salt & grease from knives dragged outside the skin. I like to imagine beautiful fat farm pigs clanking wine glasses overflowing with frambuesa over a job well done. The perfect pairing. The creaminess of the beverage cut with a tinge of artificial fruit, barely tart & bright red.

On the takeout tray, the pigs practically swim. The sazón rice, the pinto beans, the potato salad & pickled onions, & all the sauces would put those macaroni sounds that we all love to talk about now to shame. Eating this alone is an exercise in sonic juxtaposition & I’m grateful for that clash.

I ate this meal in a car once (actually many times) take-out from the local Dominican spot after another late-night crisis shift. When my sense of body descended, the pork belly crunch was a nice distraction from the slooshing of everything else — bringing too much attention to my rear-view mirror. In each chew, I looked for corners in the round ends of my face.

This was a typical annoying end-of-day -- listening to terrible NY sports radio while I ate. Old white men were complaining about young black & asian women for stepping away from their craft to work on their mental health. I stepped outside the car for a cigarette. My mom always said, "never smoke indoors, never eat in bed."

I tried to put on my headphones, but they were dead. Which meant I had to listen to myself breathe in my weakness & rapidly spin the lighter's wheel or flap the metal lid, unable to stop.

So, I pleaded with the universe to make a sound loud enough to get me through the next five minutes, but there was no answer. It was so late. I was parked on a street settled between a train station & a cemetery. The train only came hourly, but no one rode it anyway. The pandemic was barely a year old & the dead only cried for those they left behind.

I saw a lonely pile of snow. I immediately thought of stepping on it just to hear the slush under my boots. But we were deep into March. We hadn't seen snow in almost a month. What an odd place it chose to survive.

My second bottle of frambuesa was warming in my hand, much too sweet to drink at any temperature above freezing. I sat down on the wet cement, pardoned myself to the snow & asked it to cool my drink. It obliged, offering a frozen mound to place my bottle in. It was a kind pile of snow, wanting to still be of use. It was too far along its life to be a snowman for a happy kid, perhaps it could be a bystander for a batshit young adult about to have an episode.

"I'll be right back."

I walked half a block away to light that cigarette. I didn't want the flame going anywhere near my new friend. Lord knows things were hard enough for it. Besides, it's not like I didn't physically distance myself when I smoked around my human friends. It was a courtesy thing.

When I came back, my bottle was perfectly chilled. I thanked the snow, brushed the glass against its frost as a toast. I poured a little bit of frambuesa where its little mound ended, but not too close. I wanted to offer a sip without facilitating its end further. We all die, I see it happen over-and-over. But for a moment, this pile of snow gave me something else to think about.

We sat & listened to nothing together -- for what would have been 5 songs. I didn't light another cigarette. I wanted my new friend to live its last days in peace. I picked up some of the litter surrounding it (most of it mine) & went home.

The next day, the first of spring, I got the same late dinner after the same late shift & parked in the same spot. All the snow was gone. The ground was perfectly dry, I looked up at a mass of clouds & traced the path of evaporation in my mind, flashing a smile at the cloud I imagine the snow had returned to. I picked up an extra bottle of frambuesa, grabbed from the back of the cooler this time, & poured it out on the sidewalk.

I'm not so crazy to claim that pile of snow was alive, but it was there for me that day. I can't say I've had many quiet smoke breaks or meals since, or that I've gone on to have several inspiring quiet walks to write oh so many poems, but I've had a few.

I still can’t explain what I hear in the silence or see with my eyes closed. I just know I still don't eat in bed & I still tuck my phone under my pillow, just to have something on.

My therapist tells me to practice quiet minutes right before I go to sleep. Sometimes I think back to the crunch of that pile of snow gripping a bottle. Sometimes it works.