...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvzMSPzll4M&ab_channel=BrandonWashington

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Silence,

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I think that there is

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A tremendous power,

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A hidden dignity, 

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In maintaining a quality of silence - 

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Of preserving a quiet

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In suffering, while suffering;

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In conveying one's success,

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The elated rush of achievement

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Or the elevated pitch of accomplishment,

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Through the inundation of a whisper;

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In allowing one's atonement

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To resonate, not in the linear cartography,

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The hermeneutics, of cathedral aisles 

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Or the charmingly simple acrostics

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Of acoustically organized pews, 

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But in the hollow caverns, the divets,

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The gouged incensements and the familiarity

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Of age-wrinkles and crows feet, the honorary psalms  

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That liken themselves in our skin, 

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In the lines about our eyes,

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In the faded cords of our muscles

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And in the nuanced textures of our souls.

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Silence, echoes in those places -

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It echoes, and ricochets and resounds - 

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And I think, given the opportunity 

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To just be present in that,

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To be encompassed,

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Many of us are drawn, purely, or come to find, tentatively,

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That in the silent sonority of those places -

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The deeply entrenched frets, the creases -

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That who we are, or who we've been,

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Who we'd intended to, and perhaps even failed

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To be,

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Who we'd resented with such an immaculate clarity,

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And pitied, with an empathy that becomes synonymous with the saintly,

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Had been resting there

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All along, waiting for the opportunity to reveal itself,

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To rear its head amidst the echo-chamber 

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Of nothing

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And sway,

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In the all too encompassing silence

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Of a quiet, and perhaps prolonged

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Reunion, with a self that had,

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Beneath either a fist, or in the contexts of a song,

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Allowed itself, or condoned itself, to -

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Within the concealed folds, or the camouflaged drapes 

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Of persona, of ego, anima and animus, shadow -

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Soundlessly, and expressionlessly 

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Withdraw.

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Author's Note

(draft)

(I'm tired, and tend to run out of steam near the end)