Can You Hear Me?

Can you hear me?

I send my words like arrows into the sky,

but they vanish before reaching you,

falling into a silence thicker than stone.

I shout with thunder in my lungs,

my voice a storm breaking open the night,

yet it crashes against walls

that rise invisible,

unyielding,

a fortress between us.

I am an echo in a canyon,

repeating and repeating,

but never landing in your ears.

My cries scatter like birds in the wind,

and you stand unmoved,

as if deaf to the beating of my wings.

Are you listening?

I am the child pounding on locked doors,

pleading to be seen,

my hands bruised from knocking.

No matter what I give,

it is measured and found wanting,

a river pouring itself out

into desert sand.

Could you not spare five minutes,

a flicker of light through your shutters,

a single crack where recognition seeps in?

I am here, burning myself to embers,

but you breathe me out like smoke.

It is breaking,

it is wearying,

it is a knife of silence carving deep.

And still I will not let you make me the villain.

Pride keeps my spine unbroken,

my storm unfinished.