SPEAK

The day I learned to speak

my parents rejoiced I wasn’t mute,

but who knows what I ate.

Nights, silkworms grazed mulberry leaves,

my heart through the hours of

Yin

browsing what it could.

At dawn I spit my first silk threads.

Through the pain of the torn primordial,

I opened my mouth,

divine silence fleeing my lips forever:

saying, desperately saying.

How else to drive back fear.

Wrath spills out with eloquence,

splashed toward common ears,

sigh-sleek words

slipping toward emptiness.

Among all who listen

I speak to only one.