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What Remains Unsayable by Susan Cronin



What Remains Unsayable

 

The dictionary animals are fast asleep,

as they have been all their lives,

as you were told when you were told

—by whom, you couldn’t say—

that you may never open that book.

 

(You were a child,

this was your first memory.)

 

You imagined

—you could not have done otherwise—

birds with their sharp faces

tucked under their wings—

there is no “why.”

You grew dizzy with the belief

that they dreamt only of you.

 

(If you woke them

could they steal

your wishes?)

 

But the book, the book,

its cover worn smooth as the sky,

the mille-feuille of its pages

would fall to flakes

at the most careful touch.

 

(Its title illegible,

a lost, ancient message.

Flecks of gold foil

under your tiny nails,

it might have been sand

from the moon.)

 

That night, inside your dream,

your ears tuned to a distant

clockwork chirp. You woke.

The song sang on,

your window open, the book

perched on its ledge.

 

(Wasn’t this

your wish before

you wished it?)

 

You tried but couldn’t echo

the note, the sound, the unknown

bird-like thing. You sat up all night.

 

(You were a child, nighttime,

then, the deepest mystery you knew.

You cannot prove your memory is true.)

 

As the darkness ticked away,

the chirping crept closer,

 

(your little mouth unable

to shape itself around

those uncanny sounds,

your baby bird throat open

as if waiting for a worm)

 

the book slipped out the window,

gilt-edge page after page.

Held still by your pillow

you froze to your bed

and watched it go—

 

(You could never reduce this

to human words, never dared try

to tell anyone—the cruelty

of children dumb and blunt,

of mother, without remorse,

—silence the thought.)

 

Years have peeled away

—the disappearance of

the book without a further word—

yet, ear cupped to your pillow,

you hear an otherworldly bird

insistent in its own metallic rhythm.

 

It has been so uncountably long

since night scrolled by

unsilent,

                                                unblank.

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