“to try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little”
–Roland Barthes
Another day whistling phrases from pop song melodies
Hours after they’ve played on the radio on his way to work.
Another night as he twists in sleep worrying phrases he heard
Other people say as he wandered haplessly through his day.
His silence and blather pulled him ever deeper into the morass.
He said too much too late, and too little when it could’ve mattered.
Fragmented and inarticulate to the end, he parses his phrases
Sharply between all he said and all he wished she had heard.
(July 9, 2017)
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