There is a hole in the ground the dead cannot fill.
\nOnly memory can feed it. And silence,<\/p>\n
that populous sound. What the world calls power
\nis suddenly rubble, concrete piled on grief.<\/p>\n
The ruins of everything everywhere
\nevidence of dreams not traveled.<\/p>\n
Assorted body parts in disposable bags,
\ndust coated, almost earth.<\/p>\n
People look like rubbish
\nwhen they are no longer people.<\/p>\n
Memory is the cruel companion \u2013
\nfamiliar voices in old phone calls,<\/p>\n
remembered faces, traveled spaces,
\nthe loves that time locks in a heart.<\/p>\n
They lift boulders, gather bones,
\nlooking in the rubble for somebody\u2019s father.<\/p>\n
Some sift the tale, filling the gaps in spaces
\nwhere things once were.<\/p>\n
As if the sky crashed, taking the top to the bottom,
\nbreaking faith. And there is no longer certainty,<\/p>\n
no sunlight, only craters and mystery, gravity,
\nabsence, the violence of not knowing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Our moment after work is a lifetime of tales.
\nYou know how to stretch it. I am waiting<\/p>\n
for the joker to announce himself
\namong your classroom types: pied pipers,<\/p>\n
court jesters, sleeping beauties
\nwaiting for their princes, ogres and elves,<\/p>\n
mythic Anansis. How does learning happen
\namong that lot? I listen to your tales then listen<\/p>\n
to your voice, then realize you have lost me.
\nI never know when from being silent<\/p>\n
I drift into silence. We do silence, you and I,
\nour way of not being there. Common to us<\/p>\n
like a black hole within, an exit more terminal
\nthan exile. Not the sudden pause<\/p>\n
in conversation or break in transmission,
\nnothing planned or pregnant with udders<\/p>\n
ready to feed its next moment.
\nMore an end of purpose, as if<\/p>\n
sudden in the well-lived air nothing.
\nWe do silence, and not just us.<\/p>\n
Its story lifts from distant time \u2013
\nParadise lost, humankind quite finished<\/p>\n
with Eden, swallowed by the silence after.
\nOr that moment of the Enola Gay,<\/p>\n
before meaning and its response in tears,
\njust that instant of deleted presence,<\/p>\n
as if the past erased itself
\nmaking words redundant.<\/p>\n
And there is what happens in love
\nI cannot explain, how<\/p>\n
after the vows exchanged
\nand body fluids shared, you are here<\/p>\n
and I am here but between us
\nan immeasurable silence<\/p>\n
we fill with laughter, stories,
\nthoughts, well, any kind of sound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
American Trauma There is a hole in the ground the dead cannot fill. Only memory can feed it. And silence, that populous sound. What the world calls power is suddenly rubble, concrete piled on grief. The ruins of everything everywhere evidence of dreams not traveled. Assorted body parts in disposable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1767,"parent":229,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-979","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1622,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/979\/revisions\/1622"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}