SILENCE IS HOW YOU CAPTURE DESIRE
Give what you have of you to the quiet, your hands are empty, we are not the better people.
I
You’re stuck with one thing while a million crawl up the wall and settle themselves as glowing orbs,
dripping with the faces of the unheard, of the footsteps you dream of taking, of the life that has never
thrown itself down for you- there is a crowd around you, you are stuck on one thing, they are bodies
who thicken their pulses which thoughts that are good, so many God ridden thoughts and so much
money to pay for all of them, for the sights of a Bohemian wilderness, of sultry air and a kind hand, so
much of it that you can’t have yours, or anything with that thing caged in you, but you’re looking up
and there’s a million crawling up the wall but your hands are as wet as your brothers, standing in that
close, waiting for one to drop into your palm.
II
He said that he’d only done it once and he was nicer than you imagined, so you try to make out that
you’re soft and you’re sweet, in the dream that sinks into the filthy pit of desire. He tells you that
you’re rough and it’s only a few seconds, you in the overhead light, he’s not driving you home, this is
your dream and even when it all slackens and the unconscious growls and consoles itself in its own
liberty, he won’t touch your hand. This is your dream, his car is silver and parked outside Harold
Park, he doesn’t step out and all you have is loneliness swelling in you, becoming more curious and
impatient the taller the seconds get. But even your temptation thickens with the truth - that you’re
swallowed by something sick, you know it and he sees it. It’s a sin to crave to be chosen, leather seats
fuzz under the breath where you say that you’ve never done it, and he was another world sitting in
front of you and there was a hole in the fence of your chest when you lifted your breast. In this dream
you don’t hurt yourself anymore and he’s saying nothing mean, it’s surprising you. When you think
your world is limited, you begin to believe it, act on it. The blood draws and the blood swallows the
air that falls from the chimney, down to the lane. In your dream, night starts to wake.
III
Magic is a seizure.
Magic is my mother.
Magic is her swallowing the fever so it wouldn’t be mine, letting her become whole again.
Magic is the last word that never ran off her tongue, telling me that i have a face and that it is clean,
that I didn’t do it, when it was warm underwater and the music curled off the speakers and spun me
around while she leapt over hills and into an unfolding mist, never there again unless it’s a dream that
settles right down there, where fright folds and burns and i turn back to what I shouldn’t do, but there
is no one to tell me that i’m good, tell me that i’m good, that it’s not lost on me yet, that i’m not a gone
case, that i can still speak, that i can thrust this language onto someone and it can be good, i can be
good like before, when I didn’t have to beg to be heard because that’s what i do, i beg to be heard, to
still be a girl.
Magic is the sound of the right path tightening my chest.
I wait for magic like I wait for life, hungry.
IV
You were seventeen and your dad opened and closed the door, sometimes, it was his house. You were
seventeen and there was a fire outside your bedroom door and Beowulf was at your foot. You were
seventeen and only monsters hurt other monsters, everyone else just closes their eyes. You were
seventeen and your room was a city drenched in loss, the dreams flinging themselves off your back,
the poems on your walls and into your hands with broken flight and you couldn’t drive around it. You
were seventeen and no one waited for you unless they forgot their key, you sat with the visions of her
over again. You were seventeen and you gave up your body to a truth that sunk and aged your bones.
You were seventeen and you waited on things which were blind to you, like the boy who looked like
nothing you wanted but you were a beast who dared to dream. You were seventeen and you almost set
your fathers bedroom on fire after he brought his cousin home as a bride, into your mothers room, she
had only been dead for five months. You were seventeen and you couldn’t remember the the thing he
said about disfiguring, about your face, about how you’d even keep her as a vegetable, how that made
you dirty, how you didn’t need to hold her once more, he brought you a new mother, that time was
quick and to live, he didn’t care, you have to get over it but you can’t talk about that. You were
seventeen and you didn’t mind it when it happened all again, even in the loneliness, a dead body was
still her body. You were seventeen and you wondered if people were really there to help other people
because they told you that to be hit was fine when he brought bread home, but you can’t remember
that stuff. You were seventeen and there was a tear in your favourite shirt and you always came to
God last, in every prayer, telling him that you had to leave and fast. You were seventeen and you were
afraid.
V
It’s good when I’m silent.
I’m good when I’m silent.
There are no words that you can hear.
I won’t drop a drop of it.
Am I beautiful when I’m silent?
That thing lurking.
The thing chewed by grief.
The thing bitten by lost faith.
She gives herself to this.
She sits in the glory of this silence.
Marghlara, 17, London - England ✯ almondbunny333@gmail.com