Someday, you’re an old man
and they’re all gone:

One to the West Coast,
One to man’s
insatiable appetite for war,
One to marry a man
you thought unworthy of her,
And the one here even now,
the one who always returns
no matter what obstacles
that keep the others.

He’s the one
who from the time
he was a baby
understood the silences:

The sound paper makes
when crinkled
in utter noiselessness;

The sound a heart makes
when contracting
without benefit of other hearts;

The sound of a voice faint
but recognized by the inner spirit
who says at your death bed,
“God! I love you, Dad!?”
as you journey half earth, half heaven.

And you smile through the pain,
try to let him know now
what you never bothered to tell
him back when you had so many days,
that, deep within your hidden heart,
he was always the one
who battled the silence for you

making you know
through talk or humor
or his mere presence
at the end of other hospital beds
that nervous breakdowns bring,

again and again he reminded you
that silence is the cruelest,
the most deadly illusion.

And with your last breath
in this world you remember
quickly and silently why
you loved this one so:

He was the one
who gave speech to the silence.

 

Bruce Curley lives in Martinsburg, WV and has published in over 60 literary journals, including Viking Demons, Screaming Like a Banshee, Permanently Bent Back, and Girl at the Deli in WordWrights, The Electric Life in The Potomac Review, and Homeland Security Parable in Lynx Eye.