Silence

Nailah, your poem came to me like a glass of still water left overnight on the altar. It doesn’t ask to be drunk. It only waits - and in that waiting, it reflects everything: the dust, the moon, the trembling hand that reaches for it. You begin with “If speech is silver, silence is golden.” I have heard that proverb before, but in your poem it no longer sounds like a saying - it sounds like a revelation whispered by someone who has just come back from the edge of the world. You have the courage to start with something the world already knows, and then to make it tremble again, to remind us that even wisdom can rust if left untouched. Then you write “Like gold, silence coats. It is a shield in times of need, a refuge in times of despair.” I like that you give silence a body, a weight, a function. It’s not abstract: it is worn, like armor, or poured, like oil. I imagine a woman sitting alone at a table, the silence wrapping around her shoulders, not to protect her from the world, but from her own voice. That’s how silence works: it defends and devours at the same time. You go on: “Silence is power. Silence is comfort. Silence is security.” These short, declarative lines sound like commandments carved into a stone we can barely lift. There’s something biblical about them, something that reminds me of those moments when even God pauses before answering.