hearing sound for the first time after not knowing it for years
because i'm selfish
fooled myself into thinking
i didn't need to hear
to know what you are saying
i can get by with reading your lips
i can even hear
what you aren't saying

there are 365 days in a year
1,095 days in three
60 seconds in a minute
525,600 minutes in a year
26,280 hours in three

i heard you
maybe
once or
twice

i thought
"middle school is just a bunch of drama it's okay if i tune out for a while"
i thought
"high school is just a waste of time"
i don't need to hear the melodramatics and fights

when i went in for my yearly hearing check-ups with the audiologist
she asked me if i'd been wearing my hearing aides
i said no
rolled my eyes
and tuned out her lecture on losing the ability to speak

it has been three years
four if i'm being truthful
i'm relearning language in a way i've never known language
silence is so ******* loud
i can hear the plips and plinks of water droplets bouncing off of porcelain
in the bathroom, two rooms away

sound is vibrating in front of me like
i'm watching a movie of sound again
maybe i'll be able to turn off the closed captions
or maybe i'll keep them
people are hard to understand sometimes
even with dialogue running along the bottom of the screen

i like what i'm hearing but just in case there's ever a time
when words are a bit too sharp and on the verge of hurting me
i'll know to turn the volume down instead of taking
my ears
out.
-
-z.z