the moon is nothing

the moon is nothing

“There must be something in him, something fundamental, that disenchanted people.

‘Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki,’ he said aloud. I basically have nothing to offer to others.

If you think about it, I don’t even have anything to offer myself.”

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, Haruki Murakami

dark chocolate

dark chocolate

"Alienation and loneliness became a cable that stretched hundreds of miles long,

pulled to the breaking point by a gigantic winch”

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage, Haruki Murakami

i am standing at the counter

of a Starbucks

in a Barnes & Noble

i came here to buy

the new colorless Murakami

my small acts of happiness

there i see no dark chocolate bars

i used to buy for you at another Starbucks

that absence like the hole

resting in my chest

where you used to be

like a new book or square of dark chocolate

spoken (we swallow words like cyanide)

spoken (we swallow words like cyanide)

“We know of course there’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless.’

There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”

Arundhati Roy (2004)

i did not want to be the one to say it

of course

we swallow words like cyanide

inoculating ourselves against the world

never spoken

never thought

never done

never shunned

these are the poisons that paralyze us

leaving us mute and fixed like an accusing stare

our sanctified commitment to silence

and the busy busy busy hustling of monks

filled nearly to bursting with all the unspoken

a smile painted across our closed lips

we imagine other worlds where holding hands

and laughing light up the rooms where everyone

and i mean everyone

talks freely and often like rising balloons

and huddled children so excited they can barely breath

i did not want to be the one to say it

of course because now that i have spoken

i have made you uncomfortable turning away

to find that place without me or my words