I Cannot Say the Word

I Cannot Say the Word

 

He is silent tonight. I came to speak a word I cannot say.

The eyes, they forbid me. Their teary mist, they thwart me.

The sags beneath, they beg me to stay the night I cannot stay

But wish that I would say the word I cannot say.

 

Is he waiting for me? To draw blood from my tongue and speak?

And bleed the word I cannot say? Should I utter such a word,

I would spurt forth red from its injuries where its syllables were

Rehashing and slashing violent to be said.

 

I’m biting back, into a sore, the word I cannot say.

The word that will release him yet send him

Into that dreadful place: away.

 

We are silent now. I cannot say the word that gnaws behind

My kissed lips to be spoken and now he’s choking.

He regurgitates easy promises of everlasting, of lavender,

Of eternal, of satin sheets, of forever…between the working weeks.

 

And it’s the whispers in between we cannot speak.

Although silent, he knows, secrets like these,

The conscience finds too deafening to keep

At low sound of harmless dreams.

And the heart will wake, in chill of the night,

From unconscious sleep.

 

“Goodbye” is a word for you to say, for you to bleed, because

I cannot speak the word while loving you this way,

While it’s still, forever, you that I need.

 

© 2014. Asha Gowan. All Rights Reserved.