i can feel my soul rotting out
you’re sitting there, i can taste your
smoke
the bitterness of words on your
breath,
massless
meaningless
i breathe them in anyway.
i know you can’t take anything seriously;
maybe it’s just that you can’t take the
right
things seriously.
you look at me like i’m a
child
(why won’t you meet my eyes)
and you talk like the world is yours
to explain to me,
a little too loud and
a little too long and
a little too much like
you think you’re telling me things i don’t know
(could you even--?)
you think i speak when i’m spoken to,
i think i speak when i’m listened to;
because if you were
right
maybe fewer of these conversations
would be about you
and i wouldn’t be left to wonder if you like me
for the things i do say,
or just for the things i
don’t,
while i’m silently absorbed in
sitting here
listening
nodding
smiling
a word for every thirty of yours,
oh, wow
and
how nice
like clockwork until I’m just
crazy
with
listening,
counting down the seconds until your
impromptu sermon
(beacon of self-righteousness)
ends,
and finally
i can remember the sound of my own
voice,
snatched away in the wind
stirred up by your beating
wings,
but maybe carried off to someplace
where i can actually be
heard.