Silence

after many years

"You worry too much."

She said as she rested an elbow on my shoulder.

“Basita” "it’s the Lebanese word for

Stop complaining

Because it’s only a “simple matter”.

 

Three syllables that can solve

Twenty-Three years of pain

And erase every ache you feel

Every thought that’s driving you insane--

Six letters that are served up with

A side of sympathetic sighs

While the anger inside intensifies

And you stand there shaking

Behind the polite smile

That you’ve practiced so many times

While every word you’ve never said

Runs out of your throat and back to your head

Where it festers inside a closed up past

And you stand there--still.

I wonder if you knew when you brushed it all off

That you knew nothing at all about what it’s like

To climb a ladder with no steps

With the weight of a thousand tears

That accumulated over the years

And still find yourself at the top

With nothing but pages and pages

Of a story you never wrote

Or never told

Because it was never simple at all.

I wonder if you knew that

These shoulders are all I have

And I clung onto those pages

like the words were made of air

And every sentence kept me alive

Because at every full stop

The sentence started again

And that was enough.

I carried the world on one shoulder

And with the other I pushed through time--

a door made of rusted nails

that tore at every last shred of hope

I held clenched in my fist

Hard against my chest

So I could feel it with every breath

I fought to breathe as I climbed every last stair

Ridden with the broken glass

And the grains of sand that slipped through my fingers

As I collapsed under the weight of my own mind.

It feels like I was holding a million balloons

And somewhere along the way I tripped and

I tried and tried to bring them all back

But they floated into an abyss

And I found myself standing on a lonely street

With bleeding feet and a sky full of clouds

That began to fall like a brick wall

Dissipating into a sea of shrouds

That fell on my skin like the tip of a knife

And tore open every wound I had held together

My entire life.

Basita.