i walked downstairs to my room
and cried the way i had taught myself.
curled up in a ball
tears dripping to the ground
gripping the floor
screaming
crying
yelling
but never heard.
silent.
i would never wake my family!
why, that would be mean.
so i cry.
silently.
and rip my hair out
and try not to cut
and punch the floor
and hug myself
and punch myself
and hate myself and feel so, so sorry for the little boy who had to deal with this.
for myself.
i hate this

I wish poetry came to me
As easily as a fish to water.
I wish poetry came to me
When I was happy
Instead of when I'm sad.

But I'm not a fish,
And poetry is not water.
But I'm not happy.

So I pick a pen and grab a sheet,
And try to write
Beneath the stars and the sky.

And I write and write about your eyes.

And as I finish these lines,
I realise even thought it did not come
As easy as a fish to water,
I am happy.

And at the end of the day that is all that matters.

In the wildest place,
my mouth stopped with stars,
I came to the end of words;
the parched mint, bitter
paper plank

where I lost my balance,
on one foot teetering
along that roadway where gold-
flashing fireflies stand effortlessly
on air

to send their fragile signal
out,
every night a nocturne
of one less
til I and the last firefly

danced alone
in the wildest place
sending our last ignition
out
to find our kind

or else fall quiet
and one
with the wild that
will neither be spelled
nor known.




©joyannjones June 2023

Some things are too whole
to be spoken.

A look.
A breath that almost turned into speech.
The way your shoulder moved
  before the apology
  that never arrived.

We speak so much
  just to hide
  what we actually feel.

But the unsaid -
 it sits quietly
 in the space behind your teeth,
 in the silence between names.

It doesn’t fade.
It settles.

I remember the pause
 more than the sentence.
The moment before
 you almost said
    “don’t go.”

But didn’t.

And that
  has echoed longer
    than any goodbye.

What we don’t say
 doesn’t disappear.
It becomes
 the resonance
    beneath everything we do.