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Robert Leston was born and raised in New Jersey. He has lived in Florida and is currently a PhD student in English attending The University of Texas At Arlington. When he is not teaching, he studies literary and rhetorical theory and reads and writes poetry. He has recently published in The Pegasus Review, Offerings, and Poeticvoices.com.
Silent Languages
Terri Vaughn
When my father was dying that slow death that steals all language
He used to stutter meaning into sentences,
He used hand motions instead of sounds.
As he struggled to communicate, his eyes often begged for comprehension,
But people would turn away, loving their own conversations,
Syllables they understood with shallow meanings,
Never noticing the deep language between his faltering words.
At first I faltered too, fighting to learn his language, searching within myself
To grab each stuttered syllable and hold it until that sound became mine.
His eyes were the key to conversing in that broken way,
They begged me to listen and to construct knowledge from the silences,
To find in the movement of his hands the intensity of human hope,
To grasp beyond the broken sentences and hear the resonance of a man’s heart;
I learned the depths of language in those years that my father was dying a slow death.
We knew nothing of language in our early years, life was like dying,
The sound of lost promises and torn hearts.
Intense in our desire to be heard we lengthened the stillness,
Constructing soundproof walls from days of busyness,
Locking up language, and burying the key beneath the dust of love.
We stubbornly held on to our muteness, retrained our ears to cope with being deaf,
And both lived in worlds void of speaking, a universe without language.
Our void swallowed my reality, language was a dream of nostalgia
Conjured in my waking hours to haunt my sleepy and stubborn heart,
Creating a dusty vision of utopia where the people cared to speak.
We slept and ate and had kids and the days of silence grew louder,
Lengthening in their solitude as the shadows lengthened each night outside the house.
Sometimes we danced and laughed and remembered the promises of desire
Without ever opening the door to language; the wordless quiet never changed.
Then one day you offered to carry my bags, and I heard the language of a door
Squeaking as it opened just a crack. I remembered to stick my finger
Inside the narrow space to prevent closure and at night I slept beside
Its opening, praying that day would rise on a new beginning, a wider gap
In the plastered wall of long forgotten meaning. And so a brief utopia arrived,
Not as in my dreams in ample sentences, but one syllable at a time, waking
Me to the possibility of language instead of death, a nostalgic vision too quickly interrupted.
One death should be enough, but language is in what you don’t say, which interrupts
My consciousness and provides ample fodder for imagination to construct
Meaning and read uncertainty in the firmness of your jaw and your changing smile.
I am afraid that I am beginning to comprehend the mysteries of the way you see
Everything I do and the slight twitch of your head when I have touched the inside
Of your heart unconsciously; I almost understand the questions that surface in your honest eyes—
Are you asking me to explain myself? I offer no comment, not yet sure I know my own language.
But language is in what I don’t say, commenting on your questions only at night
When I am alone; the answers blotted on the pages filled with ink and tears.
During the day the words are lost and I do not speak or touch your ears with meaning,
I don’t say those sentences I have rehearsed, asking only how you are, afraid to let you hear or see.
Yet in my uncertainty, I keep returning, reiterating those words I don’t say… one more time.
In imagination you dwell in my utopia of expression; we talk and realize the significance
Of exposing human hearts; we laugh... and our certainty creates the syllables of language.
Your language reverberates when you don’t speak, and I listen to each syllable of open sound,
Striving to realize why you keep me guessing, but fearing the appearance of real expression.
You communicate in ways I learned with my father; I return intuitively to discover your voice.
Although afraid, I hear language when you say, “You know where I am,” shrugging and pleading
simultaneously.
And I want to know, but I don’t dare guess what you mean; I respond, but not in discernible utterance.
I admit that perhaps you are speaking while I am not—I fear I may never give you my voice except
in ink.
Still, there may be language in silences and hesitations, the questions of unspeakable desire that
refuses to be satisfied by death.
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