i believe therefore i spoke

iv. i believe therefore i spoke

estefaaano_writes 

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not that certainty had come to me at last,

nor that my words had found their righteous order,

or the room had made itself ready;

nor that i had become the manner of man 

who bares his chest unto the gale

and held his hands still while he bleeds.

i spoke because the silence had grown corporeal,

of poundage i could feel in the jaw,

clogging the throat;

bitter constriction of a man who has

kept his own counsel so long, 

that holding has become

 indistinguishable from being held; 

who supped full that he has begun

to taste only but himself.

i believe therefore i spoke.

bereft of grace arriving light-like 

through some well-positioned window.

this blight exceeds the older wound.

a man adrift in the dark,

decreeing the cadence of his own voice,

however broken, however unbeautiful,

was preferable to another year of proving 

he could endure the grave without it.

i spoke and it was wrong.

i spoke and what came forth was ungainly,

crushed too long into too narrow a vault,

half-formed, blunt.

but it came forth.

and then, only then, came belief.

faith in the radical, unreasonable proposition that 

i existed sufficiently to warrant being heard;

that my voice was no rude interruption 

of a silence more deserving;

that a man long revenant has retained still 

the sovereign right to part his lips

and mean words from it.

i believe. 

therefore i spoke.

therefore perhaps, 

i am.

☁︎