“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.
