I must be mad

Thirteen and writing poems saturated

with red maple, stately elm, with air

so cold it opened a passage in my

throat. I didn't know then this could

be a description of love.

I dreamed, far into darkness, far

past the hour of waking, in

languages foreign to me. Each

morning I opened a dictionary to

search for meaning.

Others attempted to fill in words

for those I didn't know, but

meanings became lost

in translation.

I built a catafalque for words I couldn't

understand, willed them to leave my

mind in peace.

But I could not banish the moments

when thunder edged out silence, pulled

a torn shard of sky into its lungs and

exhaled, puncturing some part of me I

didn't know was in need of opening.

When I fell to my knees in cataleptic

trance, it was feared I must be mad, or in

a dream, bewitched. But no one could

acknowledge their fear, or my cry from

the wilderness,

I could not explain these

restless journeyings,

these moments when babble coalesced

into common tongue, when I could

understand, without benefit of a

dictionary, the multiple versions of

silence and of love.