Missing Words by Megan Windom
It’s not so much about the things that we say.
There’s so much that is left unanswered and
unasked, whispers atop pillows that are
left ignored or forgotten by the time
morning reaches in to rouse the panic
that starts the day two hours too early.
Turned heads, averted eyes, the shrugging off
of a simple touch alerts the other
into a state of fierce agitation.
A cycle of avoidance and distance
that only feeds miscommunication.
Even when there is no meaning to it.
We watch for the little things that we see
within ourselves. A tired look turned to
the sky in order to find the answers,
a moment of internal reflection,
is viewed as an eye roll by the other.
There’s no peace in this interpretation.
And through all of our calculated attempts
to dig into the hidden meaning of
a scratched nose, or
rubbing a tired eye
after a long day of stretched out silence,
we always seem to come a little short
of actually getting anywhere.
The unspoken words hover between us,
a barrier that I can’t penetrate.
I can look up the meaning of Herzschmerz,
but I don’t know what to do with these things.
Maybe we should just open our mouths ‘cause
I don’t have a dictionary for this.
_____________________________________________
BY DEIRDRE O'CONNOR
Though there's no such thing as a
"self," I missed it—
the fiction of it and how I felt believing in
it mildly
like a book an old love sent with an
inscription
in his hand, whatever it meant,
After such knowledge, what forgiveness . . .
—the script of it like the way my self felt
learning German words by chance—Mitgefühl,
Unheimlichkeit—and the trailing off that happened
because I knew only the feelings, abstract
and international, like ghosts or connotations
lacking a grammar, a place to go:
this was the way my self felt when it started
falling apart: each piece of it clipped
from a garden vaguely remembered
by somebody unrecognizable—
such a strange bouquet that somebody sent
to nobody else, a syntax of blossoms.
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