Chatter

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.