1. |
Soundscapes
03:26
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Soundscapes
by Irena Manukian
In the early morning
silence is held together by
threads of my exhaled breath,
entangled with the whirr of traffic
and the growing susurration of the desiccated leaves,
the wind exploring every unseen corner
and forcing the landscape into trepidation.
It buffets against lampposts and benches
until I don’t know in which direction stillness is;
I can’t keep up but somehow
I am stepping forward.
I shuffle papers
and the silence is pockmarked by low murmurs in the back of the room,
clicking of heels and passing voices somewhere overhead,
endless movement in the scratching pencils and
sharp intakes of breath and I can feel each shift in the air
on the palms of my hands.
Inside my blood is hammering
with echoes of the empty tapping of my fingers on the desk
and my thoughts are prying the silence back out of the sounds
but I am too slow, too still,
too slow.
Outside my door people mingle
and I hear their voices rippling through the air
and they are far away, so far away from wherever my body is right now,
and still the sound pushes through me and around me
as if I were hollow, as if anyone had asked
if I wanted to sit still and listen, as if each wave of words
wasn’t pulling me into its undertow.
And the silence belongs to the chatter and the clinking of glasses
and the music reverberating faintly from above,
and who do I belong to?
And I am alone and there is so much sound,
so much rustling in my thoughts,
and I am inhaling the humming of the refrigerator
and the quivering of air in the vents,
and each metallic drip of water in the sink
drowns me all over again.
I’m waiting for a silence that belongs to me
because right now I belong to the rumbling of the dryer and the footsteps on the ceiling
and wouldn’t it be better to be numb,
because how does one wring out this endless ticking sound,
you can’t just wrestle silence to the ground and tell it to dance for you,
because I am small and worn out and I can hear
the slipping of hair over the skin of my neck and the shuddering in my throat
and the endless rattling somewhere between my ears and I can feel
the movement of everything around me pushing in every direction
and I don’t know if I am moving or if I am
still.
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2. |
Sheep in Fog
01:41
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Sheep in Fog
by Sylvia Plath
The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.
The train leaves a line of breath.
O slow
Horse the colour of rust,
Hooves, dolorous bells -
All morning the
Morning has been blackening,
A flower left out.
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.
They threaten
To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water.
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applecore Lowell, Massachusetts
hello i am tim from lowell and i have a cat named bebe
Background pic credit: Irena Manukian
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