The tip of my
tongue is brick red
these days,
from trying to spell out words
it no longer remembers.
Hellos are now
flailing waves of hands.
Goodbyes, a nod of the head.
Thank yous, a bunch of white lilies
with a stem of orchid.
My canvases are empty,
save for the huge blots of ink
from broken nibs
struggling to put to paper
the million unsaid things.
Emails are no better than a jumble
of blank spaces and dots.
In a roomful of people,
I'm often alone,
my brain paralysed,
neurons turned to stone.
Conversations
have become alien
to my skin.
They are alpha particles
bouncing back
to different corners of the world
echoing the void within.
My heart expands a little
every day,
wondering,
if the quiet will be enough
for the universe to read my mind,
if the unruly gestures can make up
for the absence of syllables and sounds
that scream of emotions vicious and kind,
if the deafening stillness I carry,
can ever bind a part of you, to me.