Are You With Out That Voice Inside Your Head
There are some
who move through the world
like a house with all the windows shut—
no whisper from the attic,
no footfall on the stair
of the mind.
Inside them, the furniture never shifts
in the night,
no childhood shadow dragging its chain,
no mother’s hand reaching back
through time to brush their cheek,
no future self calling out
from the far shore.
I envy them,
sometimes—
the silent cathedral of their skulls,
still as an emptied bowl.
How clean the air must be
without the burnt-toast scent
of regret,
without the constant mutter
of the unloved child
still pacing the corridor,
barefoot,
waiting to be held.
But then I think—
what do they do
when grief comes in like a storm
and there is no voice
to warn them,
no old ancestor humming
a lullaby through the pipes,
no ghost to say
you have survived worse things than this,
no inner choir
to brace the rafters.
I think of those minds
as plains where nothing stirs,
no animal rising from the grass,
no wind lifting the hair
of the lone traveler.
And I think:
maybe the voices—
the cracked ones,
the tender ones,
the ones that embarrass us
with their naked need—
are the very pulse
that keeps the dark
from swallowing us whole.
Some nights
I lean close to the chatter,
the murmurs and the warnings,
the small girl crying,
the old woman laughing,
and I say
stay—
all of you—
stay.
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