About to Listen
None of us understood what he said
though we’d silenced ourselves to statues
waiting for a marble nakedness to tremble
wishing him to begin to breathe.
I touched him but didn’t understand
and that made me resent the instant
gone fleshy with anticipation,
staining him with my sweat.
Can you hear him? Can you? But not yet,
though every part of me is open and aching.
The echoes broke off before becoming
a voice that would welcome us.
I’ve turned into a library of hearing,
the aisles of unwritten books
falling from mildewed shelves. I’m
hollow as tomorrow and so very hungry.
Why would you place him beyond reach
like the horizon, or a star turning away
in its silence? He would like to come back
as though we had never hurt him.
First published in Michigan Quarterly Review 65.3 (Summer 2026): 516.
