this silence

This silence would be deafening
if you could hear it, still. 

It broke you years ago, when
you were seized with a fit
of wanting needing so violent
you dug your way out through
your own skin to escape the
stunning cruelty of the
everpause between the
asking and never receiving.

You bled yourself in
payment for what did not,
would not come.
You did not think to ask
for a receipt.

Maybe this silence was
always deaf to you too.
Imagine that: 
a deaf silence.

The world becomes something
altogether kinder, if we know
nothing exists that can hear
some of us, and not others.

There are those who swear
they hear, and are heard.
They insist that this silence
excavates their fossilized prayers—

readily willingly mercifully
just in the nick of this time
and that time too—

from somewhere inside the black
crevasse of palms touching.

You have stopped (almost)
longing to be one of them.

You are alone.
You put yourself to bed
at night and listen to your
own prayers as they
whimper, then settle,
in the dark.

You are the only one
who can hear the four-letter
words howling fire
and spitting bile
and leapfrogging
in your belly.

You are not mute (yet)
but you know better (now)
than to ask this silence
just one more time
about the unanswerables
the unmentionables
the unhaveables
the unavailables
the unassailables.

You are nothing much to everyone in particular.
You are no one's one.
You are especially nothing to a few.
You are everything to two for as long as
it will be until you are not.

Yes, this silence
would be deafening
if you could hear it,