“You’re quiet,” she says,
leaving her question
implicit. unasked.
assumed.
Yes, I am quiet. Because
to speak is to surrender. To
take my most intimate
thoughts, those quietly
polished gems and
the roughest precious
stones of my consciousness,
to gather them up into dull
words that can never
be anything but barely
adequate a container
for them, and to gift
them away like a
plastic jump rope at Christmas.
I am quiet. Because
to speak is to hand over
the only thing I have
worth having and to watch
as it is hefted, weighed,
and ingested, to watch
as she, scowling, rolls
every inadequate syllable
over her tongue, chews
carefully – or worse,
carelessly – and swallows,
consuming my only thing
worth sharing and digesting
it, making it hers until what
she has taken in bears no
resemblance at all to the
awkwardly crafted
intimacy I surrendered.
And I am left stunned
by the monstrosity it
has become that I
do not understand.
I am quiet.
I can only nod slowly, and
smile – less tightly, there -
and turn the page I’m
not reading, and hope
that silence, dedicated to
my own destruction of
someone else’s ideas,
is not the same thing
as surrender.