Seven Silences

[corvi]

(an odd mushy poem ... story? ... catalog? ... uh, some kind of word thing ... for my beloved. An introvert describes important silences in the relationship. Bad Romantic Poetry Day has arrived a day late this year!)

1
The first silence pours outward from my throat after I have finished saying your name. It expands gleefully behind its thin shell of sound, three hundred and forty meters per second. It goes in all directions: toward the windows, toward cedar boughs on the mantle, toward the perfect notched scar below your lower lip where the piercing once was. It touches all these things at once, and lessens the distance between them.

2
The second silence is brittle and silvery, like frost. It can be heard when we pause the best episode of Star Trek to listen to coyotes sing in the alfalfa field. The coyotes quiet, and the silence grows like a crystal. It grows in thin sheets between pages of books, between eyelids and eyes, between shadow and soul. It shatters easily, and will not have the same shape when regrown.

3
The third silence fills the room while we are sleeping. It draws back a little when you breathe, but it does not withdraw even as far as the door; it is thick and lazy and content. It loves warmth and dreams of long-forgotten cities, and the shapes written by your hair on the pillow.

4
The fourth silence is imaginary. It lives folded on itself within the cage of your ribs, like an origami bird. It does not know beginnings or ends. In the din of my mother's hospital room, the fourth silence unfolds itself, twice, three times, sheet music with nothing written on it. And for a little while, there is a small folded silent universe here in the circle of your arms.

5
The fifth silence is an expectant hush, like unringing a bell. It hangs on the walls while you sit at your midi keyboard composing music with headphones on. It knows secrets and the shape of your smile. This silence will not budge for sighs, but melts away like snow for music. It reveals joy and the rightness of things.

6
The sixth silence is a clear vastness, the airless silence between the stars. Sometimes for a few moments on perfectly windless nights it seeps down through the atmosphere to where we sit in the car in the driveway, watching the stars together before going into the house. The sixth silence is ancient and patient. It drapes itself over stone and sky like light.

7
The seventh silence is named Home. It winds in harmony with the others; it leaves fine traceries of feather-marks upon walls. Noise cannot touch it, and it does not leave.

Comments

[juli]

This is so lovely; thank you, my love.