Mercy Would Be Silence

The radio used to breathe like this, grey teeth chattering between channels, a sound with no shape, all sand and salt.

Falling through the air like something that gave up trying to become a voice.

I called it rain because rain was gentler.

Raindrops you could hold your hand out to.

This just poured, endless, past any door you'd want it to land against.

Sometimes it isn't sound at all but pressure, the air before a hurricane, hair lifting off my arms without permission.

A room holding its breath before something screams.

That's static too: the almost, the about-to, the electricity with nowhere to go.

Somewhere in the cupboard a signal is still arguing with itself, half a word, half a name, cut loose before it reaches the part that means anything.

You know the feeling: lips open, sound already gone.

The moon fell into the arms of a wild child and no one has come looking for it since.

That's the closest I can get to explaining what happens between two strangers who loved each other.

And now just mumble on the same frequency, never quite tuning in.

There's a hiss underneath every single room I've sat in since.

Underneath the bell that doesn't ring.

Underneath the letter I didn't send because the words kept dissolving into interference somewhere between my hand and the paper.

Not silence, silence would be a blessing.

This is worse: almost-sound, almost-touch, almost a name I almost remember calling out into a dusk that only answers back in weather.

I used to think if I turned the dial slow enough I'd find the chatter again.

Now I just sit with the static, let it fill the shape a voice used to fill, and call that listening.