Vacancy

There is silence in the things I collect. I know each one.

Each has its use; it outlives it and is replaced.
There is freedom in silence, in perfect desolation,
isolation from noise and the imposition of others.

There is a narrative of the past, a quilt of love 
and loss, a heart covered in a web of stitches.
There are empty spaces, shallow depths,
a vacancy that desperately seeks a lodger.

There is a strength that holds me firmly to the ground –
a hurricane cannot shake me, move me, touch me;
and yet, the slightest breeze from his lips sways me.

There is a world of fantasy that intrudes on my thoughts
and when I let it in, I travel without ever leaving.

I travel to a place where the stars dance upon the sky
like a hypnotic chorus line crafted by a master magician.

There is a wondrous string of presumptions, predictions
and delusions woven like a dream-like-scene –
a phantasmagoria of motion and light –
rehearsed in my mind like an act from a Shakespeare play.

And there is a man, his fingers poised over tired strings
I wait for him to strike the first note; but when he does,
it is like he’s tuning an instrument with tone-deaf ears.

Still, I have not forgotten the reverberations of love;
the melody is stuck in my head, repeating over and over,
and the words are on the tip-of-my-tongue.

2012 © Helena Malheur