But it’s better than the painful long silences that so often get stuck between the gaps in your teeth,
clogging up the gaps in your conversation like nervous holes.
So he paces around heavily, in his mind, observing another world
While your mouth flaps seemingly obliviously in the breeze.
You know he does not care;
quite honestly, you do not care either.
It is merely a ritual you attend to every Wednesday afternoon at three,
Your mind accompanying his, two pleasant companions on a familiar journey, perhaps to a different continent.
There none of this exists and there is only white, which you grope at curiously with your fingers.
Meaningless strings of words, of nothing to fill the silence.
You can see the images running blankly through his head,
Black-and-white film dully gracing the flat landscape, the washing-machine interior of his brain.
Even you can see the foam bubbles exploding from his mind, escaping from the holes of his skull with some difficulty.
You imagine bacteria, worms where his thoughts have begun to decay, being uselessly tossed aside, perhaps added with some salt in case you want to save them for later.
You don’t pretend to see colors where there isn’t anything;
You’ll return to the pile every once in a while to peruse them; discard the ones that've become too painful to look at.
He does not speak of it,
And neither do you.
The pleasant emptiness, the humming of words, runs effortlessly through your tongue and through his ears.
A balm that blocks out the deafening silence threatening to spill out heavy through the window.
Instead you sit, and he smiles, and together you silently observe the hollow shape of your brains,
The silence that cowers beneath the clamor of your voice
While you finger the delicate puppet strings between you nervously, neurotically, plastered twin anxious grins;
A pleasant chat with tea every Wednesday afternoon.
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Another poem from my Creative Writing class last year. <3
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