Is Silence your way of speaking?

By Yutka
- 185 reads
New York, August heat,
and your silence
like a room I keep entering
expecting you to be there.
Three times I have written—
postcards, small attempts at crossing
whatever distance you’ve decided
not to name.
Nothing returns.
Not even an echo.
So I invent you.
You are in another life now,
leaning toward someone else,
learning the shape of his name
the way you once learned mine.
I tell myself this gently,
as if it were kindness.
I have undone what remained—
cut loose the almost-love,
the unnecessary tenderness
I offered where I felt nothing.
There is only you now,
even in your absence.
Tell me—
is silence your way of speaking?
Do you mean for it to wound,
or has something simply been lost,
a letter, a moment,
the thin thread that held me to you?
I think of you constantly.
It has become a kind of occupation.
Even the city—
all its noise, its vertical insistence—
cannot interrupt
this quiet persistence of you.
I will leave on the first of September.
Will you be in Madrid?
There is still, somewhere in me,
the fragile architecture of a month
in which we might have been happy.
But I am learning
how hope thins.
If you are not there,
if you do not write,
I will understand—
or try to.
I will not make a scene of it.
You know how I hate
the spectacle of breaking.
Still, say something.
Anything.
Even the smallest truth
hurts less than this
unanswered space.
At the airport you said:
“I’m used to you.”
I have turned that over and over—
like a coin worn smooth—
wondering if that was ever love,
or only habit
mistaken for it.
You did not cry.
I did enough for both of us.
Everything ends, I suppose.
Even this—
this insistence,
this refusal to let go
without a word.
You were more to me
than anyone.
That is the simplest way to say it,
and the most difficult to undo.
If there is anything left—
not love, not even that—
write to me.
I need it.
Because I must begin, somehow,
to live
sin tí…
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Comments
without you there is no sun
without you there is no sun or stars. earthbound, but loved this.
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Excellent poem, Scharlie, and
Excellent poem, Scharlie, and very romantic. You must excuse me for being a little bit pedantic. Not every reader is a polymath and the phrase Sin ti ought to be emphasised, for the illiterates like me, either by italics or as a note saying that it is Spanish for Without you.
Best wishes from a grumpy old man. ![]()
Luigi x
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Yes, Scharlie, we all ought
Yes, Scharlie, we all ought to maintain a high standard and aim to profit from the opprtunity that foreign languages offer. As regards the 'old', I am told that age is just a number.
Luigi x
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This wonderful poem is our
This wonderful poem is our social media Pick of the Day
Please share if you enjoy it too
Picture Credit:https://tinyurl.com/mr99j7mw
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Congratulations!
Well-deserved. Again, I am a fan. :-)
Lots of powerful passages for me... I can relate.
"and your silence
like a room I keep entering
expecting you to be there."
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/search?q=FrancesMF
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