Author: Zoe Coats

Email: zcoats1@aims.edu

Submission:

Inhale.

 

I could wax poetic

About how time flies

I’d write you a poem 

Stuffed with decadent lies

 

Doubtless it would rhyme

And mimic Dr. Seuss

It would sound like a song

And taste like an excuse

 

But what would be the point?

 

These words are a seeping syrup

That varnishes each limb

They coat your lips in sucrose

Tasting of

Crystalized intelligence

And honeyed pretense

 

These words of wisdom

Are painful in their misuse

A mouthful of vestigial syllables

That must be plucked

Like the superfluous denticles of youth

 

These words become 

An invasive species

Endangering our native thought.

Choking vines, they creep

They cut off all circulation.

 

These words, a lush bouquet

Lavished upon a dead man

He spends them like dimes

Hoards them like gold;

Guilt speaks more

Than love ever could

 

What if I just stopped?

 

And left a gaping hole

A no-man’s-land of diction

Devoid of respiration

Would you fill it to the brim

With your platitudes?

 

I’ll tell you what:

Let’s go see a play.

We know all the words

That we never say

 

But I choose to hear instead

The words that go unsaid.

 

They find me

In the space between

Each breath

 

For ours is a pregnant pause

 

Exhale.