Ashley Lippert Poet Rhyme

Hearing Silence

I ran out of words to say,
or the strength to shape them right.
Grief settled in and took its place,
and dimmed my will to fight.

I found a kind of solace
in the silence left behind,
Though others moved to fill it 
with stories to malign.

They shaped it into something else,
something that I’m not
turned absence into evidence,
and truth to what they thought.

And still there was a pull in me
to set the record straight,
to step back in and say my piece,
but I could not bear the weight.

Would they hear me differently,
or turn it once again?
Or would I stand there, just as before,
and lose myself in them?

Because what I lost is already gone,
no words could bring it back,
no perfect phrasing strong enough
could change a thing like that.

I learned to live with what they said,
with no one who'd defend.
Silence, reshaped and interpreted 
by those who need to win.

I took my worn and battered frame
and chose at last to leave,
For there are no winners in a war
that no one can concede.

Because there are no victors here,
not in battles fought like these
just the slow, hard work of finding peace
and learning how to breathe.

And the quiet kind of courage
no one else may choose to see
the kind it takes to walk away
and keep what’s left of me.

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