Spill

Weeping, soundlessly, wordlessly, a pouring forth of hidden consonants.

Sprouting violently from the ducts, the welling ache of unspoken acts, unacted speeches, unsure of where they might land, what may grow, who will tend the tangled garden.

Not even sure who you are, why you came here, what brought on this sudden – nameless – response, the unbidden retort to the fallen leaf, the slanted light, the crooked branch, the too-soft petal.

Bruised, battered, forgotten.

Alone. Surrounded by the alone. Buried by the alone. Just one amongst many who thought there would be more. Not even special in your pain – it’s everyone’s. Not even different in your torture – it’s the usual.

That’s what is hurting most, that the hurt is not even yours. You wear the cast-off coat of hurt immemorial. And worse: it doesn’t even really fit, the shoulders are too big, the seams don’t align, it sits on your shin (not at all today’s style).

Their words rings in your ears as you lay in damp grass, gazing upon the curve of the sky, the night (endless) and the million pin-pricks that can’t burst it, bleeding its white blood that trickles and winks at you in mock-solidarity. You reach up to tend (or taste) its wounds, but it, like the rest, doesn’t need you.

I really can’t help. Those consonants you cry, the dry, ragged, hoarse scrape of unfulfilled promise, fall in such a twisted jumble that there’s no saving them. Their sharp edges pierce whatever soft rounded vowel tries to tend them, they crash and jangle with no sense of sense. These, at least, at last, are yours only, and I watch as you (cackling) jealously guard over them, sweep them into a little pile of dusty fear.

My tears I offer but they would only confuse you further, although we shall never really know, for you keep them at arm’s length. You are afraid they will melt your edges, your hard-fought angles turned to slippery curves that catch every passing shower, sensuality where there was a steely resolve never to let anything in.

I leave you weeping, soundlessly, wordlessly.