The Borrowed Voice
The Borrowed Voice
One night she wrapped her body in another man's voice, on loan,
like a garment of light stitched onto her ever-colder shoulder,
and told her story through his mouth, with a tongue of foreign honey,
then asked, in a poem written with ink made of fog,
if any other mouth could praise her the way he had praised her,
with words heavy with pollen, fallen from a sky I never knew.
I read the poem twice, like a wound beneath the moon,
and how strange it seemed that I had loved for so long and so bitterly
only to understand, too late, that my words were never
the ones she was waiting for, an empty mirror where she saw nothing,
my echo drowned in the depths of a lake that wears another face,
and the moon went out in water where I was never reflected.
I think I understand now, through this magic and sorrowful fog,
that some praises aren't weighed by their beauty,
but by the lips they fall from, like fruit from a stranger's tree;
the same word is honey on one mouth and ashes on another,
sweet poison or balm, depending on the hand that pours it,
and I was only the echo of a mouth she never chose.
And since she chose his lips, the way a flower chooses its light,
I will keep mine closed, like a wound stitched shut with silence,
a tongueless bell, hung in the tower of an endless night,
a closed book over which the ash of unspoken words keeps falling,
for not everything that burns must also cry out, not every longing needs a mouth,
there are rivers that flow underground and still, silent, reach the sea.
My silence is not death, but a kind of grace left to grow in the dark,
a glass flower blooming in the depths of a witnessless night,
and if my words are never heard on any lips,
I will carry them within me like a light buried in stone,
for everything unspoken still remains, like a root beneath the snow —
my silence is my grace, and in it, everything I loved returns to light.
Post Comments
Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem. Negative comments will result your account being banned.
Please
Login
to post a comment