CALL ME BELOVED

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect.

What are the words you do not have yet? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?

Your silence will not protect you.

– excerpt from The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, by Audre Lorde

what to do when the novelty wears off,
when I tire of hearing my own voice inside my head?
I’m certain there must be at least 365 thoughts in there –
it often feels like thousands, too nimble to grasp a hold of,
replaced and renewed just as quickly as they appear.

so what is worth saying,
worth broadcasting to everyone and no one –
which brief nothing should I give shape and form?
it becomes my earworm, a predictable itch,
the question of what is worth giving voice to at all.

I disallow myself the luxury of intellectual laziness.
when my head snaps up from the pillow I begin to ferret them out,
these words that I reflexively consume, as if each day
I stare out onto an ocean of language, deafening snippets
that roar like crashing waves – I stand on the shore
and piece them together, and it all says that
it all means nothing. I’ve come to believe
that this means everything –
all paths and all of these strings follow back
to the simplicity of it, the razor clarity of it, and

in the face of it my words mean nothing.
they mean everything. the duality is too much.
my greatest desire is to pull the secrets
from myself, to give them voice, but they hide
in the dark. they go mute. they don’t stir.