Sounds
Do I sound sad?
Can you hear it in me?
When I utter banalities
Or common courtesies
About inclement weather
Or paying bills, or other
Everyday utilities
Is that all I’m saying to you?
Or do your ears twitch at
A catch, a crack
A different quality
So “Tea or Coffee?”
Comes with neither milk nor sugar
But rather a side of
“Your choice doesn’t matter to me because neither will bring my dead baby back to life”
Or when I ask
For someone to email me some
VERY IMPORTANT THING
Does my reply seem to be
In some kind
Of dolorous code
Thanking them for
Distracting me
From my melancholy?
Or when I say
“A return ticket to the city please”
Perhaps you’d be aware of the silent addendum
“Not that she’ll ever return to me… because she’s DEAD”
(These are all thoughts I’ve had by the way
So please laugh at me and
My ability to
Dramatise
Catastrophise
And generally
Over-egg
The grief-pudding-of-my-eternal-sense-of loss
Some things deserve derision
Occasionally. Maybe.)
Perhaps now time has passed
My subtext has become subliminal
I no longer shout my pain in every word
I even talk about sad things
With an air of warm reassurance
Then I eavesdrop on myself
Hear a fragment of my voice
On someone else’s answer phone
Or notice something alien in my sister’s tone
That used to be so similar to my own
But now seems less familiar.
And I hear it plainly.
The sound of ancient agony
Rasped across my vocal chords
And I wonder how it’s possible
That people can hear me speak and not weep?
How anyone can ever answer me
Without their own remembered grief bursting out
Until we are all wailing at the sky
Sorrow’s choir swelling loud
Out out up
Wildly shaking the world
Hurling us about
So we’ll never forget her or anyone!
Lost names thunder
Against the horizon
And burst the eardrums of the lucky ones
Windows shatter
The plates of the earth shift and grate
Teeth rattle
Trees are wrenched from the soil
Violent noises, siren voices
All around, surrounded
Until it seems the ground would yield her dead.
Is that how I sound?
Is that how I sound?
Or am I only sad in silence now.