this is the call of the quiet.




a resounding chorus of shhh


he says I'm too quiet
and I want to tell him he is too loud
that the voices in his head don't have to
always come out, he grins and says he
can change that, but i don't want to be
changed,

I want to crack open my chest so he can see
i'm filled with cotton, brambles and dry grass,
that opening up sounds like a hundred trees felling
creaking and wrenching,

that in my bed in the middle of the night, the switched lights
are humming so viciously that I need earplugs, the lower
the music, the more I hear it, he breathes a misstep and
my whole body feels it, that silence speaks louder
than any word I've ever heard, has volumes,
can deafen, can maim

and the bass of an old country song bumps
behind my calves, gushing air in hot bellows
into a floor writhing in white hot strobe
how come, I think, does quiet disturb
the lack of peace, how then, does it
call so much attention but nobody
notices when you leave the room?

hold your fingers to their lips
and plead, the way you do best
gathering their insides and putting
them to the test, have they found
the way to breathe without saying
a thing? can they change that?