January and Silence

The Mill, 1964, by Andrew Wyeth

When I get real with myself (and you), I see:
nothing makes me uncomfortable like silence.
I don't trust it, its darker side having been
woven early into my life, as punishment, and
although I'm just now starting to figure it out,
I've resisted silence ever since, wasting energy,
causing pain. So many ways to function with
dysfunction: chasing the uninterested, and
overreacting over careless (meaningless)
failures to respond, and refusing to end or
even postpone conversation. And, and. And.

I gaze, now, into the cool, pale face of January.
No other month offers or understands silence
like she, fresh out of cash and holiday greetings.
She pretended to make nice with me, once, and
gave me a son, but she couldn't stand herself:
stole a different child from me, later. Trust me:
blood and muck under January's white skirt, and
I'm doing, here, what I've always done; I'm
fidgeting in the quiet. Spilling words into the hush.
But someday I'll learn January's secrets; someday,
I will. Someday, I'll make something wordless, too.

**linking at The Mag

Jim and I took the little girls to watch a ballet performance, yesterday: my very first. Beautiful, but I missed words. I waited patiently for someone on stage to speak or sing, and of course, no one ever did. Funny thing is that my Clementine (my chatterbox) struggled with the absence of words, too.

In the same vein, after five years on facebook, I deactivated my account two days ago, and things got very quiet very quickly. Still adjusting to that silence.

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