What You Don’t Hear

What You Don’t Hear

There are parts you don’t hear—

whispers that hover just outside words,

aspiration when aspiration is breath

sharing space with a beating heart still trying to convince itself it can.

I disappear sometimes, even with you,

singularity pulling me inward,

and you only notice the moments when the cold descends between us,

creeping where warmth used to linger

as you shiver, I seek warmth.

We see the mundane and the beautiful,

but you don't see the weight

— the donkey jacket, patched with old doubts,

the yoke of questionable moralities we never confront.

A ship, wandering in uncharted waters, plumb-line broken, danger beneath the surface.

Then there’s a collectivised cortex but able to adjust its commands

until there’s this uneasy murmuration of half-communication, half co-operation which exists between us

- the only ones left -

keeping love alive.

And I know you wonder— you always wonder—about the quiet spaces where I don’t explain myself. The scars.

The streets outside, they echo with the shadows of suspicion

— but neither of us speaks too loudly of the past,

does infidelity press, like a ghost against the walls of this room?

Still, you speak to me of love, and I listen,

though distracted by voices that call in the distance,

one sounds like love, the other guilt— I can’t tell which is which any more.

You hold my hand, and something inside

a murmur of wisdom from the oracle I met in a dream,

telling me to repair, (such ambiguity)

but what does she know of us?

Intravenous, this procession of doubts

pumps, quickens and slows, flaring in moments you ask questions I can’t quite answer.

Sometimes I think we are both guilty, both innocent,

both burdened by the incongruity of loving through pain.

And yet we wait, hoping the other won’t see too much or demand too much

as we pretend not to notice the fractures that keep growing beneath our skin.

Maybe I can carry this weight— maybe we can, together— but then again, maybe I’ve been drifting toward something I don’t fully understand.

You stay, I stay, we both stay,

twisted, maybe resilient, bound by knots we pretend to untangle, in ways neither of us will ever admit to understanding.

It used to be only complexity was from enemies Now I think it’s from friends.

There was innocence once, if that still counts,

Guilt, in another version of us—

But love draws finer lines than guilt.

And still, I choose you.