On Holding Your Tongue

On Holding Your Tongue


She thinks she remembers the way the girls hands hovered.
She wanted to know the touch of them. Wanted to feel fingers
massaging her memories back to before she forgot
to pay attention. Bit her lips pretended it was the girls kiss.

Morning on the other side of I miss you is not her happy place.
On those mornings she sleepwalks her way to forgiveness
gets stuck in regret and barely manages to keep her bones
above quicksand. She checks her pockets. Finds her tongue
attempts to re-anchor it so she can finally speak. It’s a bad fit.
Falls to the floor. She can’t remember the last time beauty
made her jaw drop.

The girl with the hovering hands wore an apprehensive smile.
Mona Lisa, but darker. The girl held secrets between her thighs
and sometimes when they shared she knew everything.
She would float sometimes, the girl with hovering hands,
hold clouds between her teeth. She would blow kisses
over her right shoulder. She thinks she remembers catching
those kisses. Placing them in her pocket right next to her tongue
promising to blow them back to the girl once she figured out
how to disguise blood spatter.

She thinks she remembers why things failed. The girl with
the apprehensive smile never knew that she cut out her tongue
so she’d never say anything to drive her away. So the girl,
her hands and her smile mistook silence for disinterest
instead of the adoration it was born to be. She thinks she
remembers trying to speak. No sound came.

Midnight on the other side of I miss you is failing moonlight
and false memories. Those nights she roams an empty house
checking the corners for hovering hands. She collects the dust she finds
sprinkles it on her open wound heart and hopes for concrete. She fumbles
with sewing needles and razor wire trying to stitch back her tongue
so she can finally say what she feels unafraid of letting the blood show.
She thinks she won’t forget this time because she can’t remember