Behind the Unsaid

We sat on opposite ends of one small, faithful couch.

Our sentences in winter coats, our silences a crouch.

The lamp rehearsed a warmer mood; the window watched instead.

The loudest thing between us lived behind the things unsaid.

~~

You spoke of work, of traffic lights, of weather, and of the news.

I nodded like a metronome, afraid of any bruise.

Our laughter came in careful teaspoons, measured, underfed,

While everything that mattered paced behind the almost-said.

~~

There was a “stay” inside your throat and a “don’t” behind my teeth.

A “this still hurts” that set up camp a rib or two beneath.

We passed the salt, we passed the time, we passed on what we meant.

And every quiet “never mind” was one more accident.

~~

It’s strange how wordless rooms can swell with paragraphs and scenes—

the ghosts of conversations that we never let convene.

I heard you ask for a softer touch inside your clink of glass.

You heard me beg for one more chance in how I let it pass.

~~

I blamed your lack of questions; you blamed my vanishing.

We both forgot the terror of a heart that dares to ring.

So fear became interpreter, mistrust the riverbed.

And we grew fluent only in the language of the unsaid.

~~

But here’s the part that keeps me up when midnight folds the floor:

How close we came to choosing us with just one word more.

A single, shaky “I was wrong,” a trembling “I’m not fine.”

might have turned that guarded room into a crooked, saving line.

~~

Now, when I sit with someone new and feel the silence swell,

I listen for the sentences that might be trapped in hell.

I try to free at least one truth before we go to bed—

to love what’s said, but also what still trembles to be said.