subtext

What I cannot hear clearly, controls me;

the unvoiced desires, in their absences,

revolve about my tongue like wild grapevines

slowly crushing beneath their weight the life

embedded in the day’s cold silences.

There is always a time for a question,

another niggling doubt scratching somewhere

along an edge of whichever cave waits

to be entered, yet another moment

to be filled with a dead vacuity.

Such gestures signal larger consequence—

if not, then to what purpose should I bow?

A hostage to my words, I hear only

the echoes pushing back against my walls.