Home » Poems » Lycia Harding » Too Much To Declare

Too Much To Declare

I was your treasured secret 
and as you wished, I never said a word.
Just listened faintly for the next echo 
asking me again to dreaded dark,
where you yourself spoke often and I listened, 
knowing soon by heart your murmered mantra...

"sshhhhhhhh... you are loved by me alone ... 
No other suffers your absence as I do.
And who is here beside you now, save me...?"

To duteous dark. 
Where I kept my own mouth shuttered
and would have stitched my lips closed, 
had you asked - though you did not. 
(The clenching of my smallish teeth security enough for you, perhaps) 

To desperate dark.
Where after a time, I, knowing change not brought about yourself
was never to your liking, 
did my best to keep the world a secret from the both of us,
in hope I'd then remain the perfect sibylline I was when first 
you told me not to tell.

.
But without dark, there is no light.
The transient dark
where soon I could no longer hide
nature's powerful changes and 
dissonanc led you in search of a less unnerving secret 
to coddle blindly in your murky room.
 
And in your fevered haste, you propped me on the farthest shelf, 
just as one might an un-manned puppet,
unaware that no sooner had you walked away, denial's construct
(fabricated long ago by your demand and your design, 
each furtive brick carefully mortored by your own hand) 
began to swiftly crumble

Now, as I look past the rubble at the vague shapes of those I knew 
(or could have one day known, perhaps)
I seek a frantic word, that one of them might finally find me here.

Oh - how it hurts to let go my voice!

And as it babbles past my unhinged jaw, 
spilling out in dank unfiltered floods,
I am refilled with knowledge that without you 
(and without wrong!)
I may now speak freely.

Speak, then, is what I do ...

But as the very ward that struck me mute blows out upon my breath,
I intone no counterspell to deafen you 
and when my broken silence works it's way into you stinging ear,
your notice returns at once to my agonizing shelf, where in your
tremored hand, I can almost believe I am loved again.
Certain that all I must do to stay now in your favor is 
still my disentangled tongue.

For one....
speechless....
moment....
I think perhaps I could go back into beloved exile, 
unheard for eternity!

And truly, had I been your secret still, 
certainly I would have done.Yes, I would have done....

But I am that no longer!
And now...because I WAS,

I have too much to declare.

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