Chatter away—who’s listening?
Chatter away, you strange elements, the haunts
Of my exterior: the global conscience that surrounds me.
Chatter away, friend.
Remind me of my loneliness.
Talk the words which slip through
My mind’s broken netting;
Saturate the air with thoughts which
Dissolve into the past, as it dissolves
With my stunted empathy:
The ceaseless chatter which brushes by
My soul, and echoes through the empty streets.
I eat last night’s regrets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner;
And still I hunger through the course of day,
My stomach a cracked bowl, or a broken heart,
Stuffed with coarse sand and darkened anguish,
Mixtures of dangerous chemicals, water which dries my throat:
A pit of pity—a vessel to carry what never was.
My food colludes against me, and I die of poisoning
Every night.
And I have lost one final thing:
Lost, like a beloved sweater, a single sock
Lost, like forgotten dreams
Lost, like a nostalgia for a fantasy
Lost, like the final step of love—
I lost the chatter, the warm syllables
Which tether objects to each other.
I feed myself with silence and
Starve the nonessentials from my being
Until I am left with, of course, nothing.
