If my throat had all my listening, I’d notice the wall of thorns that Unsaid words have made around this wellspring of song that, against all odds, gurgles at my center.
If my throat had all my listening, I’d see that Unsaid words, intertwined with the distorted said ones, the said and the Unsaid, all one big tangle now. Thorns of threat that keep me from moving too quickly or too far in any one direction, I’d see that they form an impenetrable wall that is my face to you as we speak.
If my throat had all my listening, I’d know that underneath it, hidden where you can’t see, (but if you closed your eyes, you might hear it), I’d hear the cold, primal presence of deep water, the fluid, bottomless
me,
clear and gurgling… alive and full of oxygen, fed from what depths? It has survived dangerous parents, murderous husbands, a failed suicide and the psych ward in an Italian hospital.
When my throat has all my listening, dark angels shake me awake, they dip their ladles into the well, pour water into a cup, push it into my mouth and bark at me, “Drink!” When I do, the truth sings up through me. It leaks through all the openings.
And suddenly I’m afraid because now everyone knows. They know I’m in here now. The soil is saturated and collapsing under this prison of thorns.
When my throat has all my listening, my legs have all my power, and the face you see is the face I feel, and the voice I use is the one that lives in the center of my belly which is where I listen from
when my throat has all my listening.