Language

Just as I move to sound the word
I start again, fall between the place

my mouth begins and the place
it makes something: the sudden here

synonymous with place and loss,
the dark world holding my body

differently. Every night I wake
at the point I try to speak

because I am trying to speak.
Because a sound breaks out.

There is no way to try a word
when silenced by it. The dark

outside will never show the inside
of my mouth back to me.

Losing that word over and over
is the same trouble as what

I carry. Maybe all lost things are
meanings beyond here and now.

Maybe there are no metaphors,
just what is true and what is true.

Credit

Copyright © 2013 by Rae Gouirand. “Language” originally appeared in The Brooklyner. Used with permission of the author.