We Write Poems

Speaking what can’t be spoken

I’m telling you how I feel, And this is my voice. My quiet voice, growing like moss

on the bottom of amphitheater seats.

My voice is quiet,

a microphone’s chord, In the place where it snugly runs under closed wardrobe door.

I used to sing with passion in private,

but musing lyrics are offbeat hums

in open rooms with no room for drums.

My voice is shy, a dog’s toy with punctured squeaking heart. But my thoughts line the panels of my throat, filled with smoke and fire’s remains. Each time I speak, I yearn for voice, And when I cry, I mourn my tongue. Always wanting and waiting, As a shadow on pavement, after its body has gone.

As the ancestors of my stolen past, Arrived to warning: “This land is our land,” As our resurrected generation cannot speak a language, buried dormant with our bones: We weave tapestries to rival ruling mythology, we tease music, with prodigal pieces of wood, discordant sounds and bodies somehow in Unison.

And we so unheard, our voices so alone, As if our mouths are boxed away from our lips

And Chained inside an echoing, Cavernous dome —

We, the quietest - we write poems.

~A poem by Chloe Paulina Hawes