When the shell of life cracks
Crushing speech and song into rattles and gasps
Infusing cold shock into your bones
In time, your wounds close and elude
Until, one day, drinking a glass of water,
or sweeping the floor, or walking through woods
The voices of those who were lost while you survived come unto you
A breath whisper seeping from a rock fissure
A strangled word hidden in a bird’s chirping
A staccato heartbeat measured in a train’s thunder
Cries you cannot hear with your ears and that do not come from you.
Those who can no longer speak
Find a voice in the Spirit of Silence
She follows us until we can finally listen for her mercy
In those noises we wish we had never heard.
We cannot choose between our lives before
or our lives after the crack
For both dwell within us.
She settles on your back and
When you are ready, you return to the place
of the execution of your illusions.
Now you seek the wail that would not let you lie,
The deepest harmony of the song of the Spirit of Silence.
It is how you live in truth
It is how you make yourself bud and bloom again,
It is, ultimately, how you will finish what
You first came to that place of rebirth to do.