Whisperers

Blossoming as it did from a deep affectation, this stillness at my side.  It took shape as a formulaic lie, spread over all these months.  Of this I am sure, in the heart of rapture, in the taming of neurosis, I move about, fidgeting, listless.  You spoke in hyperbole, recounting the thousand travails of your life.  I listened, attentive to the gaps in detail, noticed the warnings all around me.  All the times of whispers, as though the bookshelves sheltered sound.  Don't tell me; I am not ready to hear it.  My name is spoken, I turn my head toward the source and find it smiling at me, asking its riddles, wrapping its speech in this heavy cloth.  I opened the gate for all that transpired.  You sat by me, perplexed and perplexing, peeling an orange, offering me the sweet juice.  It's the fantasy of stability I was after, taking possession of your time to allow for the possibility.  The trade off--one for another within minutes, as though articulating a secret.

I found out through whatever means I could, standing outside in the rain.  I wanted to say it out loud but instead I wrote it out, the characters smudged from the water, a chorus of indecipherable signs.  Your eyes flit about the page.  You begin to withdraw from sight until I find you again, call out your name.

A  thing so simple it demands no presence and yet this frightened silence, a gaze across the room to where his shape once stood.  A smell in the air like lavender, like a dry heat, the metallic tones of blood.  Something else brought me here; I no longer wish to be set free.  I waited and waited, pacing through all these empty pages, pushing around in the dark for some assurance of an exit.  My feet suddenly taking root in the thought of you.

How your voice finds me out, unravels me.