My Best Friend

“You talk to yourself to hear yourself speak,”

My mother would say, her patience worn thin.

The youngest of three, a ghost in the hall,

Watching the shadows of evening close in.

Solitary hours before dinner was made,

A boy creating a world on the floor.

Now the habit remains like an old wooden latch

Keeping the winter away from the door.

For silence is fertile, a wild, empty space

Where the ghosts of old history are easily made.

I anchor my mind when the perimeters fade,

To keep the long loneliness outside the gate.

Let the world call it strange to converse with the air;

It is only the masonry guarding the deep.

When the room grows too heavy,

I break through the dark—

I talk to myself To hear myself speak.