Member-only story
Mr. Okoro Was Wrong
The irony of silence
He was silent as a wall.
Mute. Unmoving. He simply wrote.
Like a ghost, I stood. Baffled.
My 14-year-old bladder was full and ready to go.
“Sir, I need to pee.”
Silence. And more silence.
“Kneel!”
I froze — surprised. I had just returned to class, minutes later.
“Who permitted you to leave?”
His voice caught the attention of the classroom.
“But sir, I told you before I left.” My voice cracked.
“Did I say you could?”
I had no answer.
His voice pressed me down, in shame.
“Son,” he said, towering over me, hands in his pockets. “Silence is not consent.”
But, how true?
Silence is dangerous.
Mark Laita’s Soft White Underbelly project exposes that truth. He captures broken lives. Addicts. Homeless. Traumatized souls. People abandoned by the system, by others, by themselves. What links them? Neglect.
The kind of silence that kills.
