Silences

(Nov 2013)

eyboard

Silence.

That brief moment where you breathe between words, fight
to get air into your lungs as fast as possible, can’t
let them take the conversation from you, they
are wind and you are the kite and then can send you to Timbuktu if
they just catch that dangling string of your final word before
your breath snatches it back.

That sleepy occasion floating between unconscious and awake
too early for anyone else to be stirring from dreams
where thoughts roll down well-worn paths
then take a dive off a cliff
fall all the way down
images fly past
there are no
sounds
here.

We don’t know each other
if one of us does not speak up
we never will.

I caught your eyes or you caught mine
and I can’t help but smile as neither of us speaks
there is a great white silence between us
the clean coldness of bedsheets
slick like whaleflesh
and what we write on it could be anything
but we just stretch it out between us, back away farther and farther
and never let our eyes go.