Let Me Sit With You

Silence is such a full bodied sound.

Not like the bare echoes of cymbals

or untuned piano keys.

Silence is full of heaving chests, old hardwood sagging beneath your weight, a lonely tree branch greeting your window, and all the other too oft ignored delights.

But you cannot ask for a tattoo of silence.

You cannot present to someone your silence,

Which is why no one can ever come to know you.

And yet people always seek comfort first in knowing. So much so that even friendship is a constant parade of interviews.

To know you as you desire to be known, we must be quiet. We must have the restraint not to question or compliment. We must abandon thought all together.

Just sit with me now and suffer my hushed tones; the cracking of my thumb knuckle, scratching of my head, dusting of my left thigh.

Listen to the ways I fill my silence with meaningless posture corrections and the licking of lips.

A stranger will interrupt to ask, “What is your name?”

But a name is meaningless to me!

We all form the vowels just the same as everyone else. But when you come to me, do I not hear you coming as distinctly as the thunder before lightning? Do I not fill your silence up with all my mouth breathing? Or is your silence tucked and buried now behind nervous chatter and remarks about your children?

The essence of it is, you have become too loud. Be quiet with me, friend. Please.

Be nearly still, half dead, almost fulfilled.

That is the sound of you.