The Noise Here is Too Quiet

The city speaks in static
not loud, not soft, just
indifferent.
It hums beneath the sky's neon bruise,
where overpasses arc like broken spines
above rivers of unmoving faces.

I wait for nothing at the pedestrian bend
a chipped corner where the dust
gathers like the memory of a voice
I haven't heard since home.
The gum-stained cement remembers me.
The railings dull with a thousand greasy hands
do not.

Trees here wear ash instead of green.
They do not rustle,
only sigh
when jeepneys groan past
with their lungs of diesel and plastic saints.

I sit in the cubicle I do not own,
trace the fake leaf of a plastic plant,
watch the blinds half shut,
half giving in
flutter like someone trying not to cry.

And no one sees me.
And that is the loudest thing of all
Copyright © | Year Posted 2025

Poem

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Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace